English as a Lingua Franca in Europe and Asia: teaching policy on the ground PDF Free Download
1 / 174/174
100%
Charles University
Faculty of Arts
Department of English Language and ELT Methodology
Stefanie Morejón
English as a Lingua Franca in Europe and Asia:
Teaching Policy on the Ground
Angličtina jako lingua franca v Evropě a v Asii:
Výuková politika v praxi
Thesis Advisor: Mgr. Tamah Sherman, Ph.D.
Prague, August 2017
2
I would like to thank Mgr. Tamah Sherman, Ph.D. for her constant support, insightful
comments, and unwavering patience in the development of this thesis.
I would also like to thank PhDr. Pavlína Šaldová, Ph.D. for her invaluable help and advice,
and for going above and beyond at every stage of my time at Charles University.
3
I declare that I have drafted this thesis independently, that I have properly quoted all the
sources and literature used, and that the work has not been used for another university degree
or to obtain another or the same degree.
I have no objections to the MA thesis being borrowed and used for study purposes.
In Prague on 15 August 2017
4
ABSTRACT
The present thesis considers the topic of English as a Lingua Franca as it is perceived and
experienced by three groups: the ELF research community, ELT professionals, and ELF
users themselves.
This thesis first presents an overview of the theoretical foundations of ELF research,
identifying key topics with which the ELF research community has grappled in recent
decades.
In order to determine how much closer the ELT community has gotten to aligning teaching
policy, practices, and goals to students’ specific needs and expectations, sociolinguistic
research in the form of seven semi-structured interviews was conducted with L2 English
speakers who use ELF to live, work, and study in their daily lives, and the ELT professionals
tasked with developing their English skills in the classroom.
The content of these interviews is then analyzed with regard to the specific needs and
expectations of ELF users and the concerns of ELT professionals, followed by a discussion of
the key issues uncovered in these interviews in light of the theoretical background of ELF
research. The author provides suggestions for further research aimed at improving the ELT
community’s role in developing ELF proficiency in the expanding circle.
Keywords: English as a Lingua Franca, English Language Teaching, Expanding Circle, ELF
users, ELT professionals
ABSTRAKT
Diplomová práce se zabývá otázkou, jak angličtinu jako lingua franca (ELF) vnímají tři
skupiny: výzkumníci zabývající se ELF, vyučující angličtiny (ELT) a samotní uživatelé ELF.
V práci jsou nejprve představena teoretická východiska výzkumu ELF a identifikována
hlavní témata, kterým se toto odvětví bádání věnuje v posledních dekádách.
Aby bylo možné určit, zda se odborníkům zabývajícím se ELT daří propojit plánování, praxi
a cíle výuky se specifickými potřebami a očekáváními studentů, bylo provedeno
sociolingvistické šetření sedmi částečně strukturovanými rozhovory se mluvčími angličtiny
jako L2, kteří používají ELF v každodenním životě, v práci a při studiu, a rozhovory s
profesionály, kteří mají příslušné dovednosti rozvíjet ve výuce.
Obsah těchto rozhovorů je následně analyzován s ohledem na specifické potřeby a očekávání
uživatelů ELF a zájmů a cílů učitelů jazyka. Následuje vyhodnocení hlavních témat, která
vyvstala během těchto rozhovorů, a jejich porovnání s teoretickým výzkumem v oblasti ELF.
Autorka navrhuje další směr výzkumu s cílem zlepšit roli učitelů a ostatních profesionálů v
oblasti ELT při rozvíjení dovedností potřebných pro komunikaci v tzv. rozšiřujícím se kruhu.
Klíčová slova: angličtina jako lingua franca, výuka angličtiny, rozšiřující se kruh, uživatelé
ELF, odborníci na ELT
5
TABLE OF CONTENTS
TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................................... 5
LIST OF TABLES ............................................................................................................................ 7
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................................... 8
1 INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................... 9
2 THEORETICAL OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................ 11
2.1 RISE AND EXPANSION: ENGLISH AS A CONTACT LANGUAGE .................................................................... 11
2.1.1 THE GLOBALIZATION OF ENGLISH .................................................................................................... 11
2.2 DEFINING ELF: ESSENTIAL TERMINOLOGY ........................................................................................... 12
2.3 TOPICS AND TIMELINE OF ELF RESEARCH ............................................................................................ 14
2.3.1 CORPORA-BASED ELF RESEARCH IN EUROPE AND ASIA....................................................................... 15
2.3.2 SOCIOLINGUISTIC IDENTITY OF ELF USERS ........................................................................................ 16
2.3.3 ELF IN THE PRESENT DAY ............................................................................................................... 17
2.4 LINGUISTIC AND PRAGMATIC CHARACTERISTICS OF ELF COMMUNICATION ............................................... 18
2.4.1 PHONOLOGY ................................................................................................................................ 19
2.4.2 LEXIS AND GRAMMAR ................................................................................................................... 20
2.4.3 PRAGMATICS ............................................................................................................................... 21
2.5 DOMAINS OF ELF USAGE IN THE MODERN WORLD ............................................................................... 23
2.5.1 ELF IN THE MODERN BUSINESS WORLD ........................................................................................... 24
2.5.2 ELF IN THE MODERN ACADEMIC SETTING......................................................................................... 26
2.6 AN ELF-INFORMED APPROACH TO ELT ............................................................................................... 27
2.7 CONCLUDING REMARKS .................................................................................................................... 29
3 METHODOLOGY ...................................................................................................................... 30
3.1 A SOCIOLINGUISTIC APPROACH .......................................................................................................... 30
3.1.1 Qualitative Interviews ......................................................................................................... 30
3.2 RESEARCH DESIGN ........................................................................................................................... 31
3.2.1 Defining the Research Question .......................................................................................... 31
3.2.2 Creating the Interview Guide .............................................................................................. 32
3.2.3 Designing the Informed Consent Form ................................................................................ 33
3.3 RECRUITING PARTICIPANTS ............................................................................................................... 34
3.3.1 Finding Potential Participants ............................................................................................. 34
3.3.2 Initial Survey of Potential ELF Users .................................................................................... 35
3.3.3 Selecting Participants .......................................................................................................... 36
3.3.3.1 English Language Proficiency of ELF Users ............................................................................................... 36
3.3.3.2 Personal Background and Experience .......................................................................................................... 36
3.3.3.3 Availability for Interviews ........................................................................................................................... 37
3.4 CONDUCTING QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS ............................................................................................. 38
3.4.1 The Interview Structure ....................................................................................................... 38
3.4.1.1 The Interviews: ELF Users .......................................................................................................................... 39
3.4.1.2 The Interviews: ELT Professionals .............................................................................................................. 40
3.4.2 Audio/Visual Recording of Interviews ................................................................................. 41
3.5 TRANSCRIBING AND ANALYZING QUALITATIVE INTERVIEWS .................................................................... 41
3.5.1 Initial Analysis of Interviews ................................................................................................ 41
3.5.2 Transcription of Interviews .................................................................................................. 42
3.5.3 Detailed Analysis of Interviews............................................................................................ 42
4 ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEWS WITH ELF USERS AND ELT PROFESSIONALS ...................................... 43
4.1 ELF USERS ..................................................................................................................................... 43
4.1.1 Titouan Poulin ..................................................................................................................... 43
4.1.2 Marius Lémieux ................................................................................................................... 44
6
4.1.3 Valeria Zmoleková ............................................................................................................... 45
4.1.4 Nobuyuki Yokoyama ............................................................................................................ 45
4.1.5 Yumiko Nakanishi ................................................................................................................ 46
4.2 ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEWS WITH ELF USERS ......................................................................................... 47
4.2.1 Differences between ELF Users............................................................................................ 47
4.2.1.1 Motivation for Moving to a Foreign Country ............................................................................................... 47
4.2.1.2 Cultural Background .................................................................................................................................... 48
4.2.1.3 Level of English Proficiency ........................................................................................................................ 48
Titouan ................................................................................................................................................................ 49
Marius ................................................................................................................................................................. 50
Valeria ................................................................................................................................................................ 50
Nobuyuki ............................................................................................................................................................ 51
Yumiko ............................................................................................................................................................... 51
4.2.2 Similarities between ELF Users ............................................................................................ 52
4.2.2.1 Points of Agreement ..................................................................................................................................... 53
4.3 ANALYSIS OF INTERVIEWS WITH ELT PROFESSIONALS ............................................................................ 56
4.3.1 Raymond Sayward ............................................................................................................... 57
4.3.2 Klara Krieger ........................................................................................................................ 57
4.4 DIFFERENT PERSPECTIVES, SAME GOALS ............................................................................................. 58
4.4.1 Meeting Students' Needs .................................................................................................... 58
4.4.2 Providing Better Quality Language Education .................................................................... 59
5 DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................ 62
6 CONCLUSION........................................................................................................................... 67
REFERENCES .............................................................................................................................. 68
7 RESUMÉ .................................................................................................................................. 74
APPENDIX A: INTERVIEW MATERIALS ......................................................................................... 80
A.1 INTERVIEW GUIDE: ELF USERS (INITIAL) ............................................................................................. 81
A.2 INTERVIEW GUIDE: ELT PROFESSIONALS (INITIAL) ................................................................................ 82
A.3 INFORMED CONSENT FORM (BLANK).................................................................................................. 83
A.4 INFORMED CONSENT FORMS (SIGNED) ................................................................................. 84
APPENDIX B: TRANSCRIPTION CONVENTIONS ............................................................................. 85
APPENDIX C: .............................................................................................................................. 86
TRANSCRIPTIONS OF SELECTED EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEWS WITH ELF USERS ........................... 86
APPENDIX C.1: TITOUAN POULIN (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT – PARTIAL) .......................................................... 87
APPENDIX C.2: MARIUS LÉMIEUX (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT – PARTIAL) ......................................................... 98
APPENDIX C.3: VALERIA ZMOLEKOVÁ (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT – PARTIAL) .................................................. 110
APPENDIX C.4: NOBUYUKI YOKOYAMA (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT – PARTIAL) ................................................ 129
APPENDIX C.5: YUMIKO NAKANISHI (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT – PARTIAL) .................................................... 139
APPENDIX D: ............................................................................................................................ 151
TRANSCRIPTIONS OF SELECTED EXCERPTS FROM INTERVIEWS WITH ELT PROFESSIONALS ......... 151
APPENDIX D.1: RAYMOND SAYWARD (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT – PARTIAL) .................................................. 152
APPENDIX D.2: KLARA KRIEGER (INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT – PARTIAL) .......................................................... 162
7
List of Tables
TABLE 1. ENGLISH-SPEAKING TERRITORIES (ADAPTED FROM JENKINS 2009:2; FROM CRYSTAL 2003A:62-65) .... 12
TABLE 2. ELF USERS ............................................................................................................................................ 38
TABLE 3. ELT PROFESSIONALS............................................................................................................................. 38
8
List of Abbreviations
ACE
Asian Corpus of English
AmE
American English
BELF
Business English as a Lingua Franca
BrE
British English
CEFR
Common European Framework of Reference for Languages
DELTA
Diploma in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
EAP
English for Academic Purposes
EIL
English as an International Language
EFL
English as a Foreign Language
ELF
English as a Lingua Franca
ELFA
English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings
ELT
English Language Teaching
ENL
English as a Native Language
ESL
English as a Second Language
IELTS
International English Language Testing System
L1
First Language
L2
Second Language
LFC
Lingua Franca Core
NEST
Native English-Speaking Teacher
NNEST
Non-Native English-Speaking Teacher
NS
Native Speaker
NNS
Non-Native Speaker
RP
Received Pronunciation
SLA
Second Language Acquisition
TEFL
Teaching of English as a Foreign Language
TESOL
Teaching of English to Speakers of Other Languages
TOEFL
Test of English as a Foreign Language
VOICE
Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English
9
1 Introduction
The fact that English is the international lingua franca in today’s rapidly globalizing
world is largely uncontested. Of the estimated 940+ million speakers of English worldwide in
2017, only about 340 million of them are native speakers (Ethnologue).
European and Asian countries conduct wide-scale business transactions
internationally (UNCTADstat 2017), send massive numbers of students abroad each year
through university exchange programs, (Erasmus+ 2017), and rely economically – in some
countries more than others – on heavily-promoted tourism networks (Eurostat 2017). Out of
the necessity to facilitate effective communication between these linguistically diverse
nations, English is used as a lingua franca by Europeans and Asians who conduct at least one
aspect of their lives in English; in turn, these users adapt the language to their communicative
needs and in terms of their unique linguistically and socio-culturally-informed
communicative competences. What began as a direct result of the rise to power of native
English speaking countries has increasingly given way to an unprecedented internationality
of the English language that is both the motivation for English as a Lingua Franca, and the
result of it.
Though much research has been conducted by the linguistic community on the topic
of English as a Lingua Franca, including the potential benefits of ELF-informed language
education, the pedagogical community on the ground is still behind in the practical
application of language-awareness information and tools demanded by the implications of the
rise and reign of the English language. Hoards of enthusiastic English teachers flock around
the world each year, and the language-teacher market in Europe and Asia dominates at the
front of the pack in terms of desirability and demand. Despite the linguistic community’s
acknowledgement that ELF-specific language education would better prepare students for the
unique contexts in which their mastery of the English language will be demanded, the
average language school still touts native-speaker standards as the benchmark against which
to measure a student’s level of proficiency.
What implications does this have for the average non-native English speaker who
must then use English with other non-native speakers within the cultural mosaic of Europe
and Asia? What challenges does this reality present for our students, teachers, and
10
administrators? Where do we need to go from here in order to best address the unique
concerns of our global ELF community?
This thesis considers the topic of English as a Lingua Franca as it is perceived and
experienced by three groups: the ELF research community, ELT professionals, and ELF
users themselves.
Chapter 2 presents an overview of the theoretical foundations of ELF research,
identifying key topics with which the ELF research community has grappled in recent
decades. As stated in the end of this chapter, ELF research has highlighted the fact that lingua
franca interactions, including those conducted in English in the expanding circle, are
situation-specific, and argues that the teaching policies of ELT professionals should likewise
be formulated specifically for the contexts in which students will need to use the language.
In order to determine how much closer the ELT community has gotten to aligning
teaching policy, practices, and goals to students’ specific needs and expectations,
sociolinguistic research in the form of semi-structured interviews was conducted with five L2
English speakers who use ELF to live, work, and study in their daily lives, and two ELT
professionals tasked with developing their English skills in the classroom. Chapter 3 outlines
the methodology by which research in the present study has been conducted.
In Chapter 4, I will provide my own content-based analysis of these interviews with
regard to the specific needs and expectations of ELF users and the concerns of ELT
professionals, which will be followed by a discussion of the key issues uncovered in these
interviews in light of the theoretical background of ELF in Chapter 5.
Finally, in Chapter 6, I will summarize the main findings of this study, and reiterate
the need for ELF-informed practices in the ELT classrooms of the expanding circle.
Suggestions for further research aimed at improving the ELT community’s role in developing
ELF proficiency in the expanding circle will also be discussed.
11
2 Theoretical Overview
2.1 Rise and Expansion: English as a Contact Language
A contact language is a language spoken by two distinct linguistic communities who
come into contact with each other; this contact can occur for a variety of reasons, including,
but not limited to, trade, geographical proximity, migration, immigration, or colonization.
Contact languages generally fall into complementary dominance roles, in terms of which we
describe their influence on another language or language variety as superstratum, adstratum,
or substratum. English can largely be classified as a superstratum language, or
sociopolitically dominant language, which exerts a superstratum effect on the language or
variety with which it has come into contact. Catapulted into its current position in the global
arena by "the expansion of British colonial power [...] towards the end of the 19th century
(Crystal 2003a:59), English has enjoyed superstratum status in the majority of its colonized
territories, a trend which has continued as a result of "the emergence of the United States as
the leading economic power of the 20th century" (Crystal 2003a:59). As a contact language,
English has exerted a great deal of influence on the speech communities with which it has
come into contact, resulting in today's multitude of dialects and varieties.
2.1.1 The Globalization of English
To paint a thoroughly complex issue with broad strokes, we can refer to two English
language diasporas. The first, responsible for new L1 varieties, involved "the migration of
around 25,000 people from the south and east of England primarily to America and
Australia" (Jenkins 2009:5). The second diaspora is responsible for what researchers in the
field have termed "New Englishes" (Jenkins 2009:5), and refers to the colonization of Asia
and Africa in the late 18th to 20th Centuries.
This colonizing past has made way for the existence of multiple L1 dialects of
English, roughly broken into three major geographical sections: Australian, North American,
and British English (Jenkins 2009:2). The table below details the L1 and L2 use of English in
these three major dialectal regions, as estimated in 2001, and has been adapted from that
found in the relevant reference and updated to show the latest available census figures, where
they differ from the original table.
12
Territory
L1 Usage Estimate
L2 Usage Estimate
Population1
Australia
18,400,000 (2015)
3,500,000
23,969,000 (2015)
Canada
United States
19,400,000 (2011 census)
255,000,0002
7,000,000
25,600,000
35,158,000 (2014 census)
321,369,000 (2013 census)
United Kingdom
(England, Wales,
Scotland, N. Ireland)
58,190,000
1,500,000
65,100,000 (2015)
Table 1. English-speaking territories (adapted from Jenkins 2009:2; from Crystal 2003a:62-65)
While conservative estimates in 2016 place the number of English speakers
worldwide at around 983 million (Ethnologue 2017), nearly a decade ago it was suggested
by linguist David Crystal (2003:67) that there may actually be closer to two billion English
speakers around the world, taking into consideration the steadily-growing number of
individuals with developing proficiency in the language enrolled in ELT lessons, as well as
those studying independently who haven't been included in the initial count.
Regardless of which estimate you subscribe to, only about 370 million of this number
are native speakers (Ethnologue 2017). The English language, as lingua franca of a rapidly
globalizing world, is therefore awash with opportunities for contact to occur between both L1
and L2 speakers. As a result of this rampant mixing and the use of the language by those
other than L1 speakers, English continues to move out of the mouths of native speakers, and
into that of non-native speakers, who adapt the language to accomplish their own specific
communicative tasks (Widdowson 1984:384). Recalling Kachru's (1992:356) model of the
English language as divided into three geographically-delineated concentric circles (see
Figure 1, below), the reality of ELF in today's world as a "function of the transcultural
exploitation of the communicative resources of all three [circles]" (Seidlhofer 2011:81),
requires demarcation on an altogether different scale.
2.2 Defining ELF: Essential Terminology
In order to discuss the role of English in today's world, it is necessary to first parse out
adequate definitions for the various abbreviated terms used by the research community to
describe English language users. First, the term English as a Second Language (ESL) refers
to second language speakers of English who use English to navigate their daily lives. ESL
1
Latest available figures represented (see Simons & Fennig 2017, unless otherwise noted)
2
World Factbook 2013
13
speakers generally live in a country in which English is the official or majority language,
such as England, the United States, or Australia. English as a Foreign Language (EFL)
speakers, on the other hand, are defined as L2 speakers for whom English is not a daily
necessity, but who primarily use English with native speakers (Jenkins 2009).
The distinction between EFL, as defined above, and that which is widely known as
English as a Lingua Franca (ELF), has to do with the occasions of its use and associated
pedagogical theory. A lingua franca, historically understood to be a kind of mixed language,
can be defined as "a hybrid used as a medium of communication between people from
different speech communities" (Seidlhofer 2011:7); whereas EFL speakers use the language
with L1 English speakers, ELF users represent a growing number of L2 English speakers in
regions such as Europe and Asia who use the language to communicate with other L2 English
speakers (Jenkins 2009). This definition, along with Firth's contention that ELF be defined as
"'a contact language' between persons who share neither a common native tongue nor a
common (national) culture and for whom English is the chosen foreign language of
communication'" (Firth 1996:240) is problematic, as it excludes L1 English speakers. While
not as numerous as L2 users of the language, L1 English speakers are nevertheless an
important and active part of the global English-speaking community that should not be
overlooked (see Cogo & Dewey 2012:12).
Ultimately, the unique reality of English today, as a contact language with a breadth
and scope all its own, has had considerable implications for a steadily growing community of
researchers dedicated to understanding its unparalleled growth and applying these research
findings to a variety of specializations. Empirical evidence uncovered by researchers such as
Seidlhofer (2001) and Mauranen (2003, 2006a), for example, who are responsible for the
Vienna VOICE and the Helsinki ELFA corpora, respectively, has gone a long way in making
the case for the designation of ELF as a discrete variety of English, though there is still
considerable debate regarding this nomenclature due to the variable nature of ELF
characteristics and ELF interactions. Moreover, a number of terms have circulated among
researchers to designate this unique variety, including English as an International Language
(EIL), World English (WE), and Global English (GE) (see Quinn Novotná 2012 for a
detailed description of this "alphabet soup").
For our purposes, we will refer to this phenomenon as English as a Lingua Franca
(henceforth ELF). In the ELF perspective, function is paramount to form; in other words,
while ELF may exhibit non-standard features that do not align with native-speaker norms,
these features are nevertheless considered legitimate within particular "communities of
14
practice" (Seidlhofer 2009:238). Being that ELF is used by all English users in specific
contact situations to accomplish certain tasks, but is not their primary dialect or variety, I will
borrow the phrase functional variety (Dunková 2014:16) to describe ELF. This community of
users includes both L1 speakers who speak traditional native varieties, L1 speakers of "local
varieties", and L2 speakers.
In the last few decades, this burgeoning field of research has been considered in light
of various concerns among researchers from multiple perspectives, most notably linguistics,
sociopragmatics, and pedagogy, which will be discussed in later sections.
2.3 Topics and Timeline of ELF Research
Though the changing face of English had been noted by linguists for quite some time
(Halliday 1964; Quirk 1985; Trudgill 2002), the modern conception of ELF was first brought
to the attention of the academic community in the 1980's by linguists Hüllen (1982) and
Knapp (1985, 1987), who "identified a need for empirical studies to identify formal and
functional aspects [of English as an International Language (EIL)] that may be useful with
regard to teaching" (Jenkins et al. 2011:285). Braj Kachru famously described the types of
English used worldwide in terms of "three concentric circles" (1985) of "norm-
providing...norm-developing...[and] norm-dependent" (Bhatt 2001:527-550) varieties of the
inner, outer and expanding circles, respectively (see Figure 1). The distinction between these
categories of World Englishes paved the way for more methodical consideration of the
similarities and differences between these groups. Despite this increasing interest, the topic
of English as a lingua franca, subsumed under larger, more general research areas, remained a
marginal topic of research until the mid-1990s.
In his plenary address at the 27th Annual TESOL Convention, Henry Widdowson
pointed out the fact that, while there is a consensus among language teachers that students
should be encouraged to make the language their own by engaging with it “cognitively,
affectively, [and] personally” (1994:386). English is at the same time subject to the widely-
accepted opinion that only the ‘authentic’ language – that is, English which conforms “to
native-speaker patterns” (Ibid.:387)– is acceptable. However, Widdowson argues that native-
speaker English is a product of the culture of native speakers; by enforcing these standards in
the classroom, we are insisting that non-native speakers assume NS cultural “identit[ies],
conventions, and values (Ibid.:381). Widdowson is among the first to suggest that this is
neither beneficial nor necessary.
15
The late 1990s saw researchers move away from these more theoretical enquiries and
embark upon a new phase of ELF research, grounded in the compilation of several corpora
and the subsequent analysis of this newly-mined data. One of the first of these studies, for
example, was that conducted by Jennifer Jenkins, who, in 1997, finally answering the call for
empirical research on the topic of ELF, identified key phonological features of English used
in a lingua franca context, which she termed the Lingua Franca Core (LFC) (Jenkins 1997),
and to which we will devote more attention in a later section. This new era of corpora-
informed research made it possible for linguists to not only identify specific features of ELF,
but to point out the features with the most targetable salience for the ELT community.
2.3.1 Corpora-Based ELF Research in Europe and Asia
Since 2000, ELF research has moved forward at a considerably faster pace with the
introduction of several searchable corpus resources. In 2001, Barbara Seidlhofer identified a
"conceptual gap" (Seidlhofer 2001), in which research on the topic of English used by L2
speakers in international contexts has progressed considerably while the ELT community
continued to focus on native speaker norms as models in the classroom. She introduced the
Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (VOICE) (Seidlhofer 2001), "the first
computer-readable corpus capturing spoken ELF interactions" (VOICE website). The
million-word corpus consists of transcribed speech events "from professional, educational,
and leisure domains" (VOICE website).
In response to the differences seen in ELF in specific domains of usage, Anna
Mauranen began developing the million-word ELF in Academic Settings (ELFA) corpus in
2003. The ELFA corpus was completed in 2008 and focuses on transcribed spoken ELF in
the academic domain (ELFA 2008).
With two major corpus resources at their disposal, researchers began systematically
analyzing the use of English by L2 speakers in international contexts. While the focus of
most research in the early 2000's focused on European contexts, this decade has seen
increased attention to ELF phenomena in Asian countries, with linguist Andy Kirkpatrick
leading the charge through his development of the million-word Asian Corpus of English
(ACE), consisting of "naturally occurring, spoken, interactive ELF in Asia" (ACE website).
16
2.3.2 Sociolinguistic Identity of ELF Users
Seidlhofer (2011) set out to redefine the popular conception of English as a Lingua
Franca put forth in the intervening decades by researchers, such as Quirk and Trudgill, who
see ELF as a widespread, but ultimately faulted and substandard, realization of the English
language. She concedes that Standard English is "equated with nativeness" (Seidlhofer
2011:50), but insists that ELF requires demarcation on an altogether different scale,
specifically, one that is "functionally and not formally defined" (Seidlhofer 2011:77,
emphasis added), to be described appropriately. In essence, ELF must be considered
alongside its sociolinguistic motivations and outcomes, as its users, for a variety of reasons,
"mark out linguistic boundaries to define the communal space in which they can invest their
group identity ... and feel socially secure" (Seidlhofer 2011:77). She specifically points out
the linguistic "fluidity and flexibility" (Seidlhofer 2011:80) of ELF as a positive attribute
allowing for a higher degree of communicativeness among its speakers, a function as much of
where the communication is taking place as much as who is taking part in the communication
and use of the language. Singling out the three-circle model put forth by Kachru in the late
90's, Seidlhofer states that ELF cannot be made to fit into these neatly divided concentric
circles, but is, rather, "a function of the transcultural exploitation of the communicative
resources of all three" (Seidlhofer 2011:81). This "freeing of 'a language'" (Seidlhofer
2011:81) from a specific geography and culture is what lends ELF its unique flavor.
As a transcultural functional language variety, ELF must then be considered not just
as what it is formally, but in terms of its functional role is in those spheres of daily interaction
in which it is used. An important question to consider may be how the linguistic identity of
ELF speakers is realized through its function as the language of intercultural business,
education, and personal affairs. Another important question, however, and one that has
greater implications for the acceptance of ELF as a functional variety of English in its own
right, is that of how ELF speakers understand their own identity.
As an example, we can look to Will Baker's (2011a) attempt to tackle this question
through a series of interviews with higher education students in Thailand. Though limited in
its scope, only comprising interviews with seven students, the study paints a picture
essentially echoing the proposals of both Widdowson and Seidlhofer, among others, that ELF
is the complex realization of English as it is used on the ground by multicultural users,
distinguished by its steady refusal to fit into any one box.
17
Baker approaches the conceptual issue at hand from the perspective that language
"can never be culturally neutral" (Baker 2011a:35), and that ELF "also offers a means and
source of expressions of identity" (Baker 2011a:35). The harmonious interplay between
language, culture, and identity is "created in each instance of communication depending on
the speakers, setting, and subject" (Baker 2011a:38). Considering the responses received
from each of the participants in Baker's study, it is clear that ELF users do not "feel forced
into the cultural norms of 'native' English speaking countries" (Baker 2011a:41), but feel a
sense of freedom manifested through their borrowing of aspects of native culture into their
foreign lives, mixing and matching from the cultural pool in order to achieve a final product
which is neither one nor the other, but exists in a "third place" (Baker 2011a:38; see Kramsch
1993). Baker's findings suggest that while ELF is "used to create and communicate" (Baker
2011:42) a user's culture, ELF users subconsciously "identify with other ELF users" (Baker
2011a:43), and, by means of and due to their "multilingual competence" (Baker 2011a:43),
form an identity that is altogether other, that of the "'intercultural citizens' who possess
similar multilingual and multicultural abilities and attitudes" (Baker 2011a:43), though they
themselves might not actively consider the question of identity at all.
ELF culture and identity, then, is a means of explaining and making sense of
experiences relevant to its speakers, a major percentage of English language users in today's
transcultural, international world. Proficient ELF users do not simply adopt the culture of the
native English world, but bring to it "their linguistic and cultural identity more or less intact"
(Seidlhofer 2011:84), and, as proficient speakers, must “make it [their] own” (Widdowson
1994:384). The reality and very effectiveness of ELF lies in its multicultural and multilingual
nature. "The main means of wider communication ... outside people's primary social spaces
and speech communities" (Seidlhofer 2011:84), it is strengthened by the varied cultural
identities inhabited by its speakers.
2.3.3 ELF in the Present Day
Today, English as a Lingua Franca research continues to develop theoretically and
empirically. Attention by researchers has focused on several areas of importance, which we
will consider in turn over the following sections. However, while describing the
phonological, lexicogrammatical, and pragmatic characteristics of ELF, one point must be
addressed and clarified, and a position taken. There is some debate among the research
community regarding the description of ELF as a proper variety of English. As mentioned
earlier, Firth (2009) argues that empirical research, in having made possible the identification
18
of its unique formal and functional aspects, suggests that ELF should be characterized and
treated as a discrete variety of English; Jenkins, Cogo, and Dewey (2011), on the other hand,
take the position that the changeable nature of ELF communication, dependent on such
variables as situational context and the sociolinguistic background and identity of its users,
limits its potential as a veritable variety in the traditional sense.
However, it is this author's position that both these positions are akin to fitting a
square peg into a round hole. As Seidlhofer asserts (2009a:238), perhaps better than trying to
describe ELF using existing terminology, it is time to "rethink what we mean by the notions
of language variety and speech community" (Jenkins et al. 2011:297). The consequence of
globalization and technology has been increased contact between people all over the globe in
all domains; English, and all its iterations and sub varieties, in its role as a global language,
has changed dramatically as a result of this contact. Consequently, terms that were once
sufficient to describe its community of users no longer seem accurate when faced with the
number of English users in the world today, and the unique ways in which they create
meaning and foster understanding in contact situations.
This has, undoubtedly, substantial implications for the English language teaching
(ELT) community. The variability of ELF means that teaching a "standard" variety of English
to learners, with its importance of approximating native-like features of phonology and
grammar, for example, may not be appropriate in most contexts. ELT professionals, as well
as students and administrators, see the value of teaching functional varieties of English,
tailored to the needs and expectations of particular “communities of practice” (Seidlhofer
2007). In certain contexts, such as in the European and Asian contexts which we will discuss
in this paper, this might mean that ELT professionals should allow for a certain amount of
variability in phonological output, for example, or adjust their expectations regarding a
learner's use of articles for the sake of greater communicative success.
2.4 Linguistic and Pragmatic Characteristics of ELF Communication
If we are to consider Lingua Franca English as a teachable functional variety of
English, separate from the generally acknowledged L1 and L2 varieties which abound around
the globe, then we must define a set of characteristics which differentiate it from the
aforementioned varieties. One major impediment to this endeavor, however, is the
fundamentally variable and changeable nature of ELF interactions to which I have already
alluded. Nevertheless, much research conducted up to the present day has focused on
identifying the unique linguistic and pragmatic characteristics of ELF communication,
19
focusing in particular on the areas of phonology (Jenkins 1998, 2000), lexicology and
grammar (Seidlhofer 2001a; Mauranen 2003, 2006a), and pragmatics (Firth 1996; House
1999; Meierkord 2002; Cogo 2009) in spoken interactions, and more recently, written
interactions.
2.4.1 Phonology
Shedding light on the question of what is and is not essential in pronunciation norms
regarding ELF interactions and their intelligibility among ELF speakers, Jenkins' (1998)
empirical study of the characteristics of ELF phonological tendencies was a first of its kind,
and aimed to "identify the extent to which pronunciation was a cause of miscommunication
between non-native speakers of English" (Jenkins et al. 2011:287) by investigating "two
interrelated phenomena: pronunciation-based intelligibility problems and the use of
phonological accommodation" (Jenkins et al. 2011:287). While instilling native-like
pronunciation norms in L2 English learners might be important in terms of individual
learners' acceptance by the L1 English community, as it is in in Jenkins’ conception of "EFL
[considered against] the Modern (Foreign) Languages paradigm" in the UK (Jenkins et al.
2011:284; Jenkins 2006a), Jenkins places ELF in the Global Englishes paradigm (Jenkins
2006; see Kuppens 2013 for further discussion of language paradigms), and argues that only
certain pronunciation features are essential to effective communication by non-native
speakers of English (Jenkins 1998:3; Jenkins et al. 2011:283). While the bulk of research
published previously regarding pronunciation "tend[s] to focus exclusively on intelligibility
for the native rather than the non-native receiver" (Jenkins 1998:3), this information can only
go so far to promoting effective communication between non-native English users in an
international context.
Identifying what she termed "core" and non-core" features of ELF, Jenkins (1998)
laid out the Lingua Franca Core (LFC) paradigm, a set of phonological characteristics unique
to ELF communication. These core features appear to have "the greatest influence on
intelligibility in English as an International Language (EIL)" (Jenkins 1998:3), and should
thus be the focus on ELT in the expanding circle. Jenkins' LFC considers three main areas:
(1) certain segmentals, (2) nuclear stress, and (3) effective use of articulatory setting (Jenkins
1998).
Defining "core" areas of particular importance to L2 English learners necessitates
specifying those areas which are "non-core" or "open to variation" (Jenkins 1998), including:
(1) word stress, (2) features of connected speech, such as elision, assimilation, linking, and
20
weak forms, and (3) rhythm (Jenkins 1998:5). These features, Jenkins argues, can be
misproduced with minimal negative consequences in communicative events.
Further commentary on pronunciation norms addresses the question of Received
Pronunciation (RP) and General American (GA), which have assumed the place of
pedagogical norms for English pronunciation in the EFL framework. Contrary to traditional
EFL practice, Jenkins suggests that their role should be that of functional models, rather than
sought-after norms (Jenkins 1998:5). Deterding, for example, points out "the attainability of
the goals of ELF-based pronunciation teaching by contrast with that of native-speaking
pronunciation which, for most learners, is not achievable" (Deterding 2010:396; Jenkins et al.
2011:288). Less likely to daunt or discourage learners, increased focus in the ELT teaching
community on these practical concerns signals a move toward functional proficiency as the
goal of language teaching, rather than strict focus on native speaker norms.
2.4.2 Lexis and Grammar
Seidlhofer (2004) has taken Jenkins' (1998) "core"/"non-core" model and extended it
to ELF lexicogrammar with similar results, declaring the existence of these phenomena
"[justification] to refer to ELF as an emerging variety in its own right" (Seidlhofer 2004:230).
Through empirical research on this topic, it has been found that L2 English speakers often
make the language their own in similar ways, adapting 'standard' lexicogrammatical
structures for their own purpose "sui generis" (House 1999:74). As a result of corpora
databases like those mentioned above, it is possible "to identify emerging patterns of lexical
and grammatical forms" (Jenkins et al. 2011:289) typical of ELF users and their interactions.
These emerging patterns include what would commonly be referred to as errors or
misuse in the EFL framework, such as -s dropping on the 3rd person singular ending of verbs,
omission or addition of obligatory articles in noun phrases, and the inclusion of redundant
prepositions, to name a few (see Seidlhofer 2004; Jenkins et al. 2011:289; Cogo & Dewey
2006:73-74). As with phonology, it is possible to identify "salient features" of ELF
interaction in the relevant corpora (Cogo & Dewey 2011); the functional use of these
“innovative forms" (Jenkins et al. 2011:290) is perhaps more indicative of ELF tendencies
than their particular forms (Jenkins et al. 2011:291).
These innovations include such tendencies as morphosyntactic adaptation to "get the
job done" (Björkman 2009), and the "re-metaphorization" and unconventional usage of
idiomatic expressions (Pitzl 2009). As Seidlhofer (2004:222) pointed out, ELF properties
show signs of "regularization" of the system, a fundament of language evolution; the fact that
21
ELF is untethered to native speaker norms means that these regulating processes are
occurring and developing in a much faster, and ultimately freer, way, and are therefore more
variable and dependent on the specific contexts in which they are used.
2.4.3 Pragmatics
Perhaps the richest area of ELF research, however, is that of pragmatics. ELF as it is
realized in its current sense, and as defined above in this paper, is first and foremost a
communicative tool used by English speakers to convey meaning and complete daily tasks.
As such, researchers have set out to identify the pragmatic characteristics of ELF that are so
unique in the greater context of English as it is used by the L1 and EFL communities.
Empirical research on the topic of English as a Lingua Franca has focused on the
interactional nature of ELF discourse. ELF users employ various pragmatic resources in order
to express their intended meaning, and certain ELF-specific pragmatic characteristics, such as
"interactional robustness, cooperation, and consensus-seeking behavior" (Firth 2009:149),
have been identified as unique to ELF interactions. Examples of English used between two
L2 speakers, for example, show that "despite variance in language form and proficiency"
(ibid.), communication [is] almost never unsuccessful, and that an "interactional 'working
consensus' (Goffman 1959; Firth 2009) [is] reached by discourse participants, who [ignore]
"speech perturbations and non-standard features in linguistic form" in order to understand, to
the best of their ability, the underlying message being communicated to them and to facilitate
the forward movement of the interaction at hand (Firth 2009:150). Owing in part to its own
ability to change and transform at every level, however, ELF is by definition difficult to put
into any one box (Firth 2009; Meierkord 2004).
This is what Alan Firth refers to as "the lingua franca factor" (Firth 2009), ELF's
"inherent variability" in both the form and the nature of its interactional strategies as utilized
by ELF speakers who possess not only differing levels of language proficiency, but differing
sociocultural and pragmatic background knowledge (Firth 2009). ELF users, for the most
part, appear to actively monitor the proficiency level of their speech partners to determine
"the appropriate grammar, phonology, pace of delivery, lexical range, and pragmatic
conventions that ensure locally adequate intelligibility" (Firth 2009:162), something L1
speakers unaccustomed to needing these pragmatic strategies rarely, if ever, consider. ELF
interactions are processual in nature, and "ineluctably emergent, [...] negotiated by each set of
speakers for their purposes in situ" (Firth 2009:162; Canagarajah 2007); the success of these
interactions is not dependent on the individual level of proficiency of a given speaker, but by
22
how well they are able to cope in a given speech situation and utilize the pragmatic strategies
at their disposal (Firth 2009:162), by which they can not only make themselves understood,
but also seek to understand others. Further evidence of this can be seen in other strategies
common in interactions between speakers, such as repetition, clarification, self-repair, and
paraphrasing.
For example, while British and American English speakers without much experience
interacting with each other may occasionally be at a loss as to each other's lexical choices and
phonological tendencies, they ultimately have a standard grammar and sociocultural
similarities to fall back on, and are in this able to quickly find familiar territory, even if
scratching their heads and asking for clarification from time to time. ELF users prefer to
avoid miscommunication whenever possible by using preemptive strategies such as those
mentioned above to avoid these pitfalls altogether (Mauranen 2006b), especially in
transactional interactions, such as those in the business domain, where interactants are trying
to achieve an ultimate goal. No two interactions are exactly the same; linguistic tools must be
continuously negotiated, and sociocultural communicative competencies, the sum total of
background linguistic, sociocultural, and pragmatic knowledge with which a speaker is
equipped, and in light of which he or she responds and reacts to an interaction or
communication event, absorbed or discarded just as quickly.
This constant recreation of common ground from which to maintain the effectiveness
of their communication necessitates that ELF users track each other's comprehension and
adjust their own communicative strategies as needed. Bearing in mind that two individuals
who have entered into an ELF interaction likely do not share a linguistic background, and
thus might neither share a cultural one, the background information they bring into the
interaction with them will also necessarily be different, and may lead to communicative
difficulties. While ELF users do use certain pragmatic strategies to signal identity, such as
code-switching (Pölzl & Seidlhofer 2006; Cogo 2010), translanguaging (Jenkins 2017), and
the reformulation of idiomatic expressions (Seidlhofer 2004; Pitzl 2009; Seidlhofer 2009),
much of ELF communication centers around "speakers [engaging in a] joint effort to monitor
understanding at every stage of communication" (Jenkins et al. 2011:293). While these types
of cooperative strategies can be seen in L1 communication, the reliance on cooperative
strategies in ELF is one of its major defining characteristics. The use of strategies such as "let
it pass", or receptive convergence, in which a listener ignores a speaker's non-standard usage,
and "make it normal", or productive convergence, in which a listener adopts a non-standard
form previously uttered by the speaker, and then uses it in turn (Firth 1996:248; Cogo &
23
Dewey 2012: 102-111), for example, highlight the "suspension of expectations regarding
norms" (Firth 2009:163), and demonstrate ELF users' concern for mutual intelligibility, or
"the negotiation and resolution of non-understanding" (Jenkins et al. 2011:293).
Users often draw on their own background knowledge and past experiences in other
ELF interactions to utilize "multicompetencies" (Cook 1992) to "borrow, use and reuse each
other's language forms, create nonce words, and switch and mix languages" (Firth 2009:
163). In other words, ELF users take what they have learned in one interaction into the next,
slowly building a personal repertoire of successful strategies to aid them in future
interactions. As a result, research focused on the pragmatic principles of ELF shows that
"non-understanding/misunderstanding tends to occur less frequently" (Jenkins et al.
2011:293) than in other forms of English-language communication, and that "ELF
interlocutors [show] a high degree of interactional and pragmatic competence" (Jenkins et al.
2011:293), mitigating errors on the fly and ensuring the success of the communicative act as
a whole.
2.5 Domains of ELF Usage in the Modern World
Having described the typical features of ELF, with its emphasis on variability
dependent on situational context and user background, we must now consider those specific
domains of use in which these interactions are formed.
What is considered common nomenclature for the parts of a car will differ for the
average layman and an automotive engineer; an IT specialist will have a necessarily more
specific lexicon for the physical parts and processes of a computer than a photographer who
uses the same machine for digital editing of her shots. Arguably, the same could be said for
the many varieties of any given language around the world; English, however, and ELF in
particular, is used so widely and so thoroughly by its community of users that some
consideration must be given to how individuals create meaningful expression in ELF
interactions, across domains and in terms of their own communicative competence.
Two domains in today's globalizing world are of particular relevance to the ELF
communities: those of business and education. While ELF users do frequently come into
contact in other domains, such as commerce, politics, technology, media, and tourism, most
notably, the prominence, magnitude and range of multinational corporations and international
universities in today's world necessitates a discussion of these two domains in particular.
24
2.5.1 ELF in the Modern Business World
Barring some region-specific linguistic preferences rooted in such sentiments as
nationalistic (or regionalistic) pride, English is widely understood to be the lingua franca of
the modern business world. As a "facilitator for intercultural contexts" (Jenkins et al.
2011:298), some level of English proficiency is often required for those employed by
companies who regularly deal with international customers and clients, or multinationals who
operate foreign branches. Research done on such topics as company internal emails
(Kankaanranta 2006), small talk and humor (Pullin 2010), and the teaching of business
English (Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen 2007) have highlighted the widespread
acceptance of English as a prevalent part of the business world (Jenkins et al. 2011:298).
One example of the important role English plays in the professional role can be seen
in studies on the management of linguistic diversity within multinationals in the Czech
Republic, specifically the German-owned Škoda-Volkswagen (Nekvapil 1997) and Korean-
based Hyundai Motor Manufacturing Czech (Nekvapil & Sherman 2018).
In the first study, while "German-based multinationals operating in Czechia could [...]
count on the use of German, English and the local language, Czech" (Nekvapil & Sherman
2018:7), these languages did not operate at the same level of prestige within company
dealings, and were often used "in a complementary manner" (Nekvapil & Sherman 2018:7).
English, as opposed to the local use of Czech and the widespread use of German as the
language of the parent company, has functioned as the primary corporate language in many
branches of the company since the early 1990s (Nekvapil & Sherman 2018:8), despite the
ethnically diverse makeup of the company's expatriate employees in the Czech branch, for
example, the majority of whom were Czech but among which one could find employees from
Germany, Spain, France, Sweden, Brazil, and Canada, among others (Nekvapil & Sherman
2018:6).
In the latter study, the languages spoken by its employees in different situations is
dictated by the managers, as the employees, hailing primarily from the Czech Republic,
Slovakia, Poland, Korea, and Egypt but also including individuals from Afghanistan, Bosnia
and Herzegovina, Germany, UK, and Hungary, to name a few, must be able to communicate
effectively with each other in any given situation. In this multinational company, English is
the only common language spoken by a majority of employees, and so is "assigned a
fundamental role" in daily interactions (Nekvapil & Sherman 2018:11). As in the previous
example, English is the corporate language in all of the company's branches, though actual
25
English proficiency is all over the board, particularly at the management level (Nekvapil &
Sherman 2018:11).
Sociolinguistic studies of contexts where BELF is used such as these demonstrate that
cross-cultural communicative competence, rather than the ability to approximate a native
level of proficiency, are paramount in BELF interactions. A departure from traditional
arguments for precision and "native-like grammar or pronunciation" (Jenkins et al.
2011:298), however, Business ELF, or BELF, communication is "content-oriented, rather
than focused on form, [...] [which is] secondary to accommodation practices" (Jenkins et al.
2011:298). While native-like accuracy is nonetheless "seen as a matter of prestige" (Jenkins
et al. 2011:298), it is hardly a requirement for all employees. In these international contexts, a
great deal more importance is generally placed on the ability to communicate effectively and
efficiently than on precision (e.g. Kankaanranta 2006; Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen
2007, 2010; Cogo 2010; Pullin Stark 2010).
As a result, Business English lessons are the most popular vessel for development of
English language skills around the world, particularly in regions known for their international
business platforms, like those found in Europe and Asia. Students sign up for these lessons in
droves, with the expectation that they will receive increased respect, greater benefits, and
more opportunities as a result of their English language skills, or simply because their
employer requires it. English language teachers and schools that cater to companies' needs, in
turn, specialize in these types of courses, sometimes offering them at higher rates than a
general English course would be offered. The average hourly rate for individual, general
English lessons through a language school in Prague, Czech Republic, for example, is
between 200 - 500 CZK; for business English lessons with the same teacher, students can
expect to pay on average anywhere from 350 - 800 CZK in 2017. This substantial difference
in cost incurred by the student guarantees neither specialized qualifications nor experiential
know-how on the part of the teacher, with few exceptions, as great swathes of the teaching
community are relatively new to the field, and language schools do little to screen teachers'
résumés. The problem this creates for L2 English learners, aside from the price, is that their
particular needs may not necessarily be addressed in the classroom, leading to professional
difficulties in their day-to-day interactions.
In instances where teachers have experience and are qualified for their role as BE
instructors, however, the tendency is for language schools to hire L1 individuals with relevant
business experience in their home countries over their L2 counterparts. This domain of use,
then, would benefit greatly from an ELF-informed approach to teaching.
26
2.5.2 ELF in the Modern Academic Setting
Just as English is the undisputed lingua franca of the business world, so too does it
hold a place of importance in the modern academic world. International students frequently
participate in exchange programs like the EU-run Erasmus, which boasts around two-thirds
of its €14.7bn budget dedicated to student educational mobility (ERASMUS+ 2017).
Programs like this, designed to offer international learning opportunities to unprecedented
numbers of students, necessitate the use of English as a lingua franca in educational
institutions, particularly at the university level, in order to make the transition from one
institution to another possible for the greatest number of individuals. As a result, many
universities offer international courses, and sometimes even whole programs, taught entirely
in English. This reality, however, results in two major linguistic impediments which must be
considered by the ELT community.
First, as we have seen, the English spoken by individuals for whom English is not a
native language can vary greatly. Operating in what Mauranen (2012:28) refers to as
'similects', ELF users understandably possess similar 'styles' of expression as those who share
their L1 (Jenkins 2016:63), but differ from other L2 English speakers. What this means, in as
international a setting as the modern university, is that students are often confronted with the
problem of communicating effectively across cultures and across these linguistically-
dependent similectal styles with their classmates. It is in this context, as in the business
world, that the pragmatic strategies discussed above play a crucial role in facilitating mutual
understanding.
The second problem many international students must confront is their personal level
of proficiency. While the majority of students must prove a certain knowledge base and
ability to use English in order to participate in these international student programs, the
current method of ascertaining their proficiency is in the form of standardized, "one-size-fits-
all" tests. Though test developers labor constantly to keep tests like the British English IELTS
or American English TOEFL current, there is some debate concerning their effectiveness,
with many claiming that these tests, "are not necessarily reliable and sensitive predictors of
future academic performance" (Jenkins 2016:57). A student's test scores may qualify him or
her for a program or class, but their ability to keep up linguistically, both with the professor
and with their classmates, may prove to be a problem once the testing phase is over and the
student gets into the classroom (e.g. Ingram & Bayliss 2007), as we will see in our data
analysis.
27
Research regarding the position of ELF as the lingua franca of the academic
community was formalized in part by Mauranen (2003), with the creation and development
of the ELFA corpus based in Finland (Jenkins et al. 2011:299), which, as mentioned before,
was completed in 2008 and launched in 2009. Studies using this corpus resource, (e.g.
Jenkins 2011; Kalocsai 2009, 2013; Mauranen 2003, 2006a, 2011) have contributed large
amounts of data relevant to the ELF skills required in an international university setting, and
provide a solid foundation from which the ELT community can build to foster teaching
practices most relevant to these ELF users in academic contexts.
2.6 An ELF-Informed Approach to ELT
As we have seen, ELF research has come a long way. However, the question of how
to implement these principles in teaching practice has been the cause of much debate within
the linguistic and teaching communities. Does a one-size-fits-all model work in English
language classrooms? How should an ELF perspective even be treated in the classroom?
Should the principles of ELF be implicitly or explicitly taught? How much should ELT
professionals adjust their teaching methods to accommodate this alternate perspective, being
that much of ELT has focused on developing native-speaker norms of language use?
If nothing else, ELF research has highlighted the fact that lingua franca interactions
are situation-specific. Not all students will benefit from an ELF-informed approach in the
classroom, particularly if their language goal is communication with native speakers in the
inner circle. Within the outer circle, language education focusing on those features related to
the local variety of English spoken will reasonably be most useful to students. ELF research,
however, has far-reaching implications for the nature of English language instruction in the
expanding circle, where students' proficiency will be tested primarily in interactions with
other non-native speakers in contact situations; here, an ELF-centered approach is the more
logical choice. In response to the need to treat English not as one monolithic variety, but as a
group of related but discrete local varieties, Canagarajah (2005) sets forth a "less hierarchical,
more leveled approach" to language instruction in the classroom, suggesting that "teaching
models, materials and methods [be] developed at a local level" (Jenkins et al. 2011:306). This
'pluricentric approach' (ibid.) would serve as a more judicious implementation of ELF-
research findings in the modern-day classroom. English language teaching to date, however,
has been primarily concerned with the propagation of native-speaker norms at every level of
the language, from pronunciation to idiomatic choices, and the shift toward an increase in
ELF-informed methods and practices slow and rife with contention and debate.
28
As an alternate solution, Kirkpatrick (2007:193), suggests a three-strand approach to
incorporating the ELF perspective in the English language classroom, which focuses on
developing language awareness, intercultural awareness, and pragmatic strategies to cope
with today's many varieties of English (Jenkins 2006:173; Kirkpatrick 2007).
First, language awareness involves the explicit teaching of those linguistic principles
of form that are important in ensuring successful communication. Core features of
pronunciation, grammar, and lexicology as discussed above, especially those that may cause
confusion in later communicative attempts, should be highlighted, and the variable nature of
language presented, analyzed, and discussed.
Second, intercultural awareness-raising tasks will ensure a student is prepared to
assess and put to use both their own cultural background and those of their potential
interlocutors in order to successfully communicate and interpret the messages put forth in
multi-cultural interactions.
Third, the explicit demonstration of pragmatic strategies typically employed by
interactants will ensure that students have an arsenal of tools at their disposal with which to
glean meaningful information from their encounters. Kirkpatrick (2007:193-194) submits that
the attention given to these multi-faceted skills in the language classroom will provide
students with the background information they need in order to successfully navigate their
own learning process, with teachers and tutors taking on a supportive role intended to guide
the student through their own discovery of the language.
It is important to point out that in proffering solutions such as that discussed above,
ELF proponents are not suggesting that students be taught non-standard forms to the
exclusion of those more readily accepted by the native-speaker communities; rather, by
giving students a wider perspective on the many ways in which English may be used in
interactions, and increasing their own awareness of their sociocultural linguistic tendencies,
an ELF-informed approach to ELT aims to provide students with a more realistic set of skills
with which to navigate interactions in contact situations. In other words, it is not the aim of
ELF research to mandate how and what teachers should teach in their classrooms, but simply
to "make current research findings accessible in a way that enables teachers to reconsider
their beliefs and practices and make informed decisions about the significance of ELF in their
own individual teaching contexts" (Jenkins et al. 2011:306).
However, research alone cannot change the way we teach English in a lingua franca
context. What is needed is conscious integration of these principles by ELT professionals on
the ground (Seidlhofer 2004; Jenkins 2006b; Jenkins et al. 2011), who can then actively
29
revise their own teaching practices in whatever way would work best for their own students.
Indeed, this appears to be in line with what students themselves have reported in previous
studies (e.g. Kalocsai 2009; Baker 2011a); these ELF users are quick to point out aspects of
their personal experiences using English in contact situations that they represent as
innovative, playful, and focused on the successful expression of a message rather than on
their linguistic accuracy as measured against native speakers (Jenkins et al. 2011:307).
However, while an increasing number of teachers would consider the implementation of
ELF-informed teaching principles in their classroom (Jenkins et al. 2011:307; Jenkins 2007),
NS standards continue to be promoted by both ELT professionals and students alike.
2.7 Concluding Remarks
How can we bridge the divide, then, between the type of lingua franca English our
students need to know and the native-speaker norms which have been touted in our
classrooms, seemingly since the beginning of time? Today, the need for adjustments in the
language classrooms of the expanding circle are more apparent still than they were a decade
ago; have we kept up with the changing times and adjusted our teaching practices and
materials accordingly? How can we shake off this lingering ambivalence concerning the
necessity for ELF in the modern ELT classroom? This thesis will attempt to gain an
understanding of how much closer we in the ELT community have gotten - if we are any
closer at all - to aligning our students' expectations and needs with our own methods,
practices, and goals, in the words of those individual ELF users and ELT professionals
themselves.
30
3 Methodology
3.1 A Sociolinguistic Approach
The decision to adopt a qualitative sociolinguistic methodology in conducting
research for my thesis project was one which came about as a response to the nature of ELF
research conducted in past decades (as discussed in Chapter 2 of this paper), which has
focused primarily on the various formal linguistic and pragmatic features of ELF. Of
particular interest to researchers are the linguistic and pragmatic strategies which differentiate
ELF from English as a Native Language (ENL), English as a Foreign Language (EFL), or
even English as a Second Language (ESL) (e.g. Meierkord 2002, 2004; Pitzl 2009; Pölzl &
Seidlhofer 2006; Seidlhofer 2007).
Rather than focusing on these forms, however, I was more interested in attempting to
understand how ELF users make use of their linguistic and pragmatic competence, and how
they themselves would describe those typical situations of use so emphasized in the literature.
In order to do this, I conducted qualitative research in the form of one-on-one interviews with
a variety of ELF users and ELT professionals, and analyzed these interviews comparatively
to identify areas of primary utility to ELF users, those explicitly taught in the classroom by
ELT professionals, and those that might need further pedagogical development.
While several researchers have gone straight to the source, so to speak, and conducted
case studies on members of the ELF community (e.g. Baker 2011; Cogo 2012; Jenkins 2011;
Jenkins et al. 2017; Kankaanranta 2006; Kankaanranta & Louhiala-Salminen 2010; Kalocsai
2013), few studies have looked at both ELF users and ELT professionals comparatively to
assess the self-reported effectiveness of teaching strategies and the particular needs of ELF
users in a general sense, as is the aim of this work.
3.1.1 Qualitative Interviews
Qualitative interviews are used in fields such as linguistics, sociology, psychology,
and other social sciences to gain insight into specified research questions that either do not
lend themselves to being answered by quantitative methods, or require a more interactive,
reflexive approach.
I chose to conduct qualitative interviews in order to gain some insight, based on the
experiences of ELF users and ELT professionals themselves, on the question of how these
linguistic and pragmatic strategies might be (better-) developed in the English language
31
classroom. The objective of these interviews was to ascertain how real-world ELF users
employ linguistic and pragmatic strategies, in their own words and according to their own
reports, whether consciously or unconsciously.
While in quantitative methodology it is typical to conduct research in order to discern
the veracity of pre-determined hypotheses based on a researcher's prior knowledge (Flick
2004:153), qualitative methods require "a suspension of this prior knowledge in favor of the
greatest possible openness" (Flick 2004:154) to the ideas that develop during the research
process. In conducting these interviews, therefore, I remained open to possible shifts in my
research objectives. A number of shifts here did occur, which will be discussed throughout
this chapter. Furthermore, I engaged in active sampling (see Flick 2009:115-126 for a
discussion of this qualitative research strategy) at nearly every stage of my research design
and throughout the interview process, in order to ensure I was working toward an achievable
analysis.
First, I conducted interviews with two sets of ELF users: (1) three European ELF
users who live or have lived in Asia, and (2) two Asian ELF users who live or have lived in
Europe. I then conducted a second round of interviews with two ELT professionals, those
tasked with developing English-language proficiency in an international environment. By
developing a comprehensive set of questions and analyzing the information obtained through
these interviews, I was able to isolate some key strategies on which ELF users regularly rely,
and highlight those areas with which the ELT community still needs to come to grips. These
will be discussed in turn in later sections.
3.2 Research Design
Following King (2004:14), there are four steps involved in the development of
qualitative research interviews which I will discuss in turn. They are: (1) defining the
research question; (2) creating the interview guide; (3) recruiting participants; and (4)
carrying out the interviews.
3.2.1 Defining the Research Question
First, defining my research question proved to be a challenging process, as there were
three groups I was concerned with in conceiving of this thesis project: the ELF research
community, ELF users themselves, and ELT professionals. Though it has created a number
32
of tough hurdles necessary to cross, I do not feel it would have been appropriate to exclude
any of these groups; my ultimate question, to what extent ELF-informed approaches to
language learning should be used in the classroom to address the needs of the ELF
community, requires closer inspection of each of these three groups in turn to arrive at the
most coherent and cohesive conclusion, and therefore necessitates a topically-unified set of
research objectives. Therefore, I began conducting research with the following questions in
mind:
How do ELF users – individuals who have studied English as a foreign language and use
it regularly with other non-native English speakers – understand the goal of developing
English proficiency? Do English teachers and administrators of language programs have
the same awareness and understanding of these goals?
In what kind of situations do ELF users most often find themselves using the English
language? How do ELT professionals bridge the gaps between the background knowledge
with which a student walks into the classroom, and the linguistic and sociocultural
knowledge they need to have to achieve personal success?
My research, from the creation of the interview guide to the analysis of the interviews,
centered around these ideas as a fact-finding exploration of the usual topics expounded upon
in the literature as they relate to the fundamental, self-reported communicative competence of
ELF users in real-world situations.
3.2.2 Creating the Interview Guide
An important part of conducting these types of interviews, semi-structured by design,
is the development of an interview guide, a set of questions and/or topics to be covered
during the interview which the interviewee should keep in mind as a reference while still
allowing for the interaction to flow naturally. While most literature on the subject suggests
using broad topics as a guide during the interview process (Flick et al. 2004: 204), I initially
though it would be more helpful to develop a set of potential questions I could turn to during
the interview in order to direct the participants toward a discussion of those points I hoped to
address in my analysis (see appendix A for a copy of my initial questions for both sets of
interviews). In reality, these questions imposed too many unnecessary limitations during the
33
first couple interviews I conducted, and, by the third interview, I had reorganized my set of
questions into broad categories I wanted to cover.
A major potential downside to this method of intentionally leaving interviews semi-
structured is that it can become difficult to draw parallels between participants. As the
primary objective of qualitative interviews is to allow of the interviewee to decide the course
of the interview naturally, it is not always possible or even desirable to try to force a
participant to answer specific questions. This means that these parallels must be drawn once
the interview has concluded, and thus require considerable reformulation of the surrounding
discussion after the fact, as well as the inability to go back and ask questions which might, in
subsequent interviews, come to light as the research progresses.
Another challenging aspect of the semi-structured interview is finding the correct
balance of interview-style questions and looser, more conversational discussion. Particularly
in the first couple interviews, I was very conscious of my own tendency to talk back, or share
some personal experience related to something the interviewee was saying. While engaging
in small-talk in this manner can do much to bring an interviewee out of their shell, and is in
fact, I've found, a useful strategy for putting otherwise nervous interviewees at ease by
promoting natural, fluid communication, it can quickly lead to the interview getting off-track,
and should therefore be consciously avoided in excess.
3.2.3 Designing the Informed Consent Form
A key aspect of conducting qualitative interviews is ensuring license to use the data
gathered from participants for academic research. The best way of doing this is by creating
and having participants sign an informed consent form, though the information that can be
included in these forms varies greatly.
In creating an informed consent form, I wanted to account for use of the recorded
interviews for the purpose of my thesis project, as well as potential future use of the recorded
interviews for future projects or corpora use. To create the form, I found a number of samples
of informed consent forms for a variety of types of interviews that I could draw from, and
designed the form specifically based on the unique issues involved in this research project.
To simplify the processing of these forms, I included a number of options for use of
the data collected during interviews. The PDF forms are clickable, and I required only a
digital signature from the participants, which was collected prior to each interview. I then
spent a few minutes at the beginning of each interview going over the form, including all its
34
options, and ensuring that the interviewee understood everything on the form and consented
verbally to my use of their interview for this and, where applicable, future studies. I've
included a blank copy of the final informed consent form as an appendix (see Appendix A).
3.3 Recruiting Participants
Recruiting participants is another aspect of the interview process rife with pitfalls. In
the early stages of my research design, I was conscious of the fact that I would be recruiting
participants on a voluntary basis. This meant that, while having certain criteria in mind would
be a useful guide in ultimately selecting my final set of participants, I had to first cast a wider
net in the hopes of catching any fish at all.
3.3.1 Finding Potential Participants
Finding ELF users who would be willing to be interviewed was a daunting prospect.
Luckily, I have an array of friends and former students around the world, thanks in part to my
prior experience as an English teacher at an international language school in the US, as well
as my current position as an expatriate in a major European city. After reaching out to many
friends likely to know individuals who might fall into my pre-defined categories, I had an
initial group of 23 potential participants.
A possible complication involved in recruiting potential participants is accessibility
(Flick et al. 2004:166); specifically, the willingness of potential participants to take part in an
interaction which, to some, seems intimidating. My status as a relative stranger, on top of the
fact that I'm a native English speaker and an English teacher, did, in fact, seem too
intimidating to some participants, who either never responded or, in some cases, expressed
outright a disinclination to being recorded or even interviewed. For the most part, however, I
was acknowledged to have active membership status to the community (cf. peripheral or
complete membership; see Adler & Adler 1987 for a discussion of membership roles in field
research), largely the result of having a mutual friend in common with all the participants in
this study. These mutual friends, or "gatekeepers" (Flick et al. 2004:166), proved an
invaluable resource in setting up these interviews.
While it might have been easier to simply interview these friends, many of whom fall
into the relevant categories themselves, my aim was to achieve at least some relational
distance from the participants in order to avoid unnecessary bias and attempt to keep the
35
interviews more professional than would have been possible in a conversation with a friend;
being treated as a relative stranger, or "visitor" (Flick 2009:111) in the community, someone
"to whom the participants have something to tell" (Hildenbrand 1995:258; Flick 2009:110),
proved useful in this regard. In the end, 19 of the original 23 ELF users with whom I was in
contact agreed to be interviewed, and I was able to select a handful of participants I felt
would provide the most interesting data.
The process of selecting ELT professionals for this study was considerably easier in
this regard as, being an ELT professional myself, all my potential participants were
individuals with whom I’ve had some degree of professional contact. However, to keep the
potential for bias to a minimum, I approached six individuals with whom I do not currently
work for this study. Though they all agreed to be interviewed, I ultimately selected the two
individuals who I feel have had the greatest diversity of experiences, both on an individual
level as well as in comparison to each other (see section 4.3).
The following sections, then, focus primarily on the initial survey and selection of
ELF users only.
3.3.2 Initial Survey of Potential ELF Users
While 19 individual qualitative interviews would be a great asset to any research
work, it is neither a practical nor realistic number of interviews to conduct in a short period of
time. In order to sift through some of these potential interviewees, therefore, I developed a
short set of initial survey questions which would allow me to select the best participants from
the field of potentials without giving away too much about what I was attempting to learn
from these interviews. These questions were intentionally general and open-ended, and
sought to categorize the potential participants in the broadest terms. They were:
1. Where are you from?
2. Where have you lived?
3. Where do you currently live?
4. What is your occupation?
One of the challenges of this initial survey was deciding how much information to
give potential interview participants. Too much information would ruin the authenticity of the
interview questions, while too little information would make it difficult to attract the types of
individuals needed for a given research work. Not wanting to bias responses unnecessarily, I
36
simply told both my gatekeepers and potential participants that I was conducting research on
English speakers from various backgrounds, and would ask them some questions about their
experience learning and using the language.
3.3.3 Selecting Participants
Several considerations were taken into account in the process of sampling a final list
of cases for this study.
3.3.3.1 English Language Proficiency of ELF Users
My first consideration was the potential participants’ English language level, and this
criterion was perhaps most important for two reasons. First, an adequate measure of a
language user's linguistic and pragmatic prowess necessitates a thorough understanding of the
language in question, and an ability to manipulate it to achieve their goals. Second, the fact
that the questions I would be asking had to do with the English language, and that I would be
conducting these interviews myself, necessitated a strong enough proficiency in the language
for the interview to be possible. I used my initial interactions (i.e., written messages in the
form of contact through social media, SMS, and email) with ELF users as a sample of each
participants' language proficiency in order to judge the potential for meaningful interaction
through video interviews.
A related criterion was that ELF users should have experience using English as their
main language of communication in their daily lives, including for either professional or
academic purposes. This would ensure the generalizability of my analysis across all
participants in this study.
3.3.3.2 Personal Background and Experience
My second consideration concerns my desire to ensure the greatest generalizability
beyond my collected data; to achieve this, I focused on individuals with the greatest available
array of experiences (e.g. with both professional and academic experience using ELF).
By way of example, I was introduced to an individual, Masahiro, who had grown up
in Japan, but whose parents were originally from North America. While I did end up
37
interviewing Masahiro, as I felt he would have an interesting perspective on the issues in
question, it was apparent within a few seconds of our conversation that his knowledge of
English goes beyond that of a non-native ELF user as defined in this paper in terms of his
phonetic, grammatical and lexical acuity. Therefore, I cannot include his interview in my data
as he falls outside of the categories within which the rest of my interviewees fall.
Another participant’s interview was likewise discarded from my results due to his
high level of fluency in the local language of his current country of residence. Despite
growing up in Croatia, Aleksandar speaks fluent Mandarin and admitted that he often goes
weeks or even months at a time without speaking English. As this is a study of ELF usage, I
felt that his experience, while interesting, was too far removed from the general experience of
other ELF users to be considered for the purposes of this study.
3.3.3.3 Availability for Interviews
My final consideration, availability for an interview, was more administrative and less
about the individual's background or ability. In order to effectively conduct these interviews
in the required timeline, I needed to focus on individuals who were not only willing but
available to talk to me for about 45 minutes or so. This meant that, in a few cases, individuals'
busy schedules or holiday plans became an insurmountable obstacle, and led to their
disqualification as potential participants, despite their linguistic ability and personal
background experiences being ideal.
Due to the fact that I conducted these interviews over Skype, travel was not necessary
in any of the cases discussed below. However, scheduling interviews around anything up to
an 8-hour time difference at a reasonable hour was more problematic than I had initially
thought it would be. While the individuals I interviewed were generous with their willingness
to speak at odd hours, I more often deferred to their daily schedules so as to limit the negative
impact on them. Midday in Asian countries like Vietnam (a 5-hour difference) or South
Korea (a 7-hour difference) is, unfortunately, the early morning hours here in Prague; this
meant that a few 4-am Skype calls were necessary.
38
3.4 Conducting Qualitative Interviews
In the end, I conducted seven interviews, which can be divided into the following
categories:
European
Asian
with experience in Europe
Nobuyuki Yokoyama
Yumiko Nakanishi
with experience in Asia
Titouan Poulin
Marius Lémieux
Valeria Zmoleková
Table 2. ELF Users
Native Speaker
Non-Native Speaker
with teaching experience in Europe
Klara Krieger
with teaching experience in Asia
Raymond Sayward
Table 3. ELT Professionals
3.4.1 The Interview Structure
As mentioned in section 3.3.2, I had initially begun interviewing participants using a
list of pre-formulated questions, though I abandoned this after the first couple of interviews
for a less-structured interview guide, the details of which are discussed in 3.4.4.1. After the
first couple of interviews, I also developed a sort of initial routine I would run through in
order to make my interviewees as comfortable - and communicative - as possible. This
involved first introducing myself and giving some background information about my research
project, and letting them know that I had started recording the interview. I would then ask
them to introduce themselves, and asked questions about something related to their
background that were informed by their responses to my initial survey (discussed above) in
order to promote a comfortable, conversational flow.
The guided portion of the interview began with an initial question regarding the
reality of English in today's world served as a starting point for the guided questions
discussed throughout the interviews, and, from there, I would begin touching on my list of
39
topics outlined in my interview guide, writing some notes for follow-up questions out of sight
of the camera, and otherwise allowing the conversation to move fluidly from one topic to
another as naturally as possible. In all instances, this method, paired with near-constant
backchanneling, helped relax those interviewees who felt a bit nervous at the beginning of the
interview.
Each of the interviews ran for at least 45 minutes, with many running closer to the
one-hour mark and several exceeding 60 minutes as time (and willingness on the part of the
interviewee) permitted.
3.4.1.1 The Interviews: ELF Users
My multiple iterations of the guide for interviews with ELF users focus on four broad
areas of discussion: (1) personal background, (2) linguistic background, especially the
process of learning English in the classroom, (3) use of English to perform specific daily
tasks and in social contexts, (4) reflections on cultural differences between the interviewee's
native culture and that within which they have resided, whether currently or previously.
My personal background questions sought to paint a general picture of the
interviewee's prior experiences, including where they have lived, and for what purposes they
moved there. Many interviews also touched on past travel experience, which came up
naturally as a result of my line of questioning, to get an idea of how adaptive the interviewee
is in non-native contexts.
Questions concerning the linguistic background of the interviewee focused primarily
on the process of learning English in the classroom, the background and effectiveness of
previous English teachers, and the general method of classroom instruction in the
interviewee's native country. Experience speaking or learning other languages was brought
up intentionally in order to ascertain the interviewee's formal knowledge of linguistic
structures, and many of the interviews touched upon basic linguistic comparisons of those
languages in the interviewee's repertoire as a result.
Interviews then moved onto the topic of English usage in the interviewee's daily
contexts, especially English used to perform specific tasks (e.g. to go to the shop or to the
bank, to order food in a restaurant) and the use of English in social contexts (e.g. among
friends in a group setting, to interact with classmates or colleagues). Particular attention was
paid to possible challenges or areas of difficulty in using English in these contexts, such as
40
the level of comfort or limitations associated with their own L2 language proficiency, as well
as that of their interlocutors, and the effect of this reality on their social circles and social life.
Finally, interviewees were asked guided questions designed to make them reflect on
any social and/or cultural differences between members of their native community, and those
in the foreign contexts specific to each case. Whenever possible, comparisons of multiple
sociocultural communities with which the interviewee has experience were used to identify
some basic distinguishing features of each community which may be relevant to linguistic
and pragmatic strategies employed by the ELF users.
3.4.1.2 The Interviews: ELT Professionals
The interviews with my ELT professionals began in a similar fashion as previously
described, but focused on five key areas of discussion: (1) personal background, including
linguistic and cultural identification (2) prior teaching experience, (3) the demographic make-
up of their language students, (4) questions regarding decisions about curriculum and course
development, and (5) personal evaluation of L2 English learners' needs.
For this round of interviews, personal background questions included the same
personal history asked in the interviews above, as well as questions aimed at discerning the
interviewee's linguistic and cultural self-identification. Previous experience as a language
learner was touched upon, in order to use the information reported here to identify parallels
between a teacher's personal experience and classroom methods, where applicable.
Prior teaching experience and qualifications were discussed in order to get an idea of
the teachers' level of knowledge regarding second and foreign language pedagogy, as well as
to quantify past professional experience as a potential means of comparison across individual
cases.
This line of questioning led to a discussion regarding the demographic spread of past
and current students, with the aim of identifying key areas of focus and considerations in
classroom methods, as well as to compare teaching perspectives and strategies (e.g. second
language English instruction in the US vs. foreign language English instruction in Europe
and/or Asia), as applicable.
Decisions regarding curriculum and individual course development were discussed to
establish the extent to which ELT professionals in the field today have freedom and control
over the materials and methodology used in classroom instruction, particularly in cases where
41
teachers have specific guidelines to follow and/or objectives to achieve that are dictated by a
language school or other institution.
Finally, interviewees were asked to reflect upon their personal evaluation of L2
English learners' needs in their own specific teaching contexts, both generally and, where
possible, in specific terms. Interviewees were also asked to expound upon the ways in which
students' needs might differ in light of particular contexts of use, with particular emphasis on
the question of NNS- interactions (cf. NS-NNS interactions).
3.4.2 Audio/Visual Recording of Interviews
I audio- and video-recorded my interviews using the Call Recorder for Skype
program by a company called ecamm, paired with my MacBook Pro's built-in microphone
and camera. Call Recorder allows you to define which aspects of the video will be recorded,
which proved essential as it allowed me to record everything (both sides of both the audio
and visual interaction) in one file, with the ability to separate them once the recording is
finished using ecamm's included software, Movie Tools. While not of the greatest quality,
both the microphone and camera did a considerably good job of capturing each of the
conversations in HD. None of the interviews were conducted in person. One ELF user opted
for an audio-only recording for personal reasons.
3.5 Transcribing and Analyzing Qualitative Interviews
The process of transcription of the recorded interviews, as well as subsequent analysis
of the data collected thereof, involved a unique set of difficulties.
3.5.1 Initial Analysis of Interviews
To limit the amount of time needed to transcribe each interview in its entirety, I ran an
initial analysis of the interviews by playing them back in full and noting the times at which
relevant topics came up within each interview for quick reference later in the process. By
sampling my material in this way (Flick 2009:115), I was able to cut down considerably on
any unnecessary transcription, as well as begin forming categories upon which to build my
analysis.
42
3.5.2 Transcription of Interviews
I chose to process my interviews - both those with ELF users and ELT professionals -
using broad transcription methods which include only the most essential phonetic
information, and to transcribe only those excerpts most pertinent to my analysis and
discussion. This was done in an effort to reduce the time it would take to transcribe each
interview, making this possible given my limited time frame. The selections I made were
based upon considerations of which excerpts would best exemplify my analysis and
discussion.
The transcription process proved perhaps the most difficult aspect of this research
study, and was the area most prone to complications. After much trial and error, I settled on a
work flow facilitated by NCH Software's Express Scribe Transcription Software, which
makes use of ‘hot keys’ which allow the transcriber to slow down, speed up, pause, and play
the recording without moving away from the keyboard. This convenient feature allowed me
to process the transcriptions manually, to ensure the highest quality and accuracy, but to do
so more efficiently than would have been possible using only basic playback audio programs.
For transcriptions, I borrowed heavily from Bucholtz and DuBois’ theory of transcription
utilized at University of California, Santa Barbara (Bucholtz & DuBois 2017), which
organizes transcribed speech in terms of Intonation Unit. As the purpose of transcribing these
interviews was content – rather than linguistic – analysis, I felt this to be the most accurate
way of representing the speech patterns of each ELF user and ELT professional consulted for
this project, while not getting excessively diverted by phonetic information that is
unnecessary for the purposes of this study. A detailed list of transcription conventions used
can be found in Appendix B.
3.5.3 Detailed Analysis of Interviews
Finally, with the interviews completed and transcribed, I attempted to draw parallels,
make comparisons, and parse out broad conclusions from the accumulated excerpts, which
are discussed in the following chapter.
43
4 Analysis of Interviews with ELF Users and ELT Professionals
4.1 ELF Users
In selecting participants for this study, as mentioned in section 3.3.3.2, I set out to
find the most diverse group of individuals available in order to achieve some level of
generalizability. As ELF can be best characterized in terms of its variability, it was important
to me that I use as varied a group of participants as possible. Each of the ELF users included
in this study personify an aspect of ELF as it is used by its army of speakers to accomplish
tasks in real contexts, whether these be motivated by general, personal, academic, or
professional concerns.
4.1.1 Titouan Poulin
Titouan is a European ELF user living in Hanoi, Vietnam. He studied English and
German as a student in the public school system of his native country, France. He has been
living in Hanoi for over four years, where he works as a waiter in a restaurant.
The fact that the majority of his coworkers don't speak English or French very well,
and his recent marriage to a Vietnamese woman, require that he have at least a basic
command of Vietnamese. He describes himself as "average" in the language (C.1.1), which
he learned through experience with friends and colleagues, armed with a small notebook and
a willingness to always ask questions. He is now able to "have conversation[s]" (C.1.1) and
order food in a restaurant or interact with shop owners, though he wishes to improve his
Vietnamese skills further.
Despite his success in learning Vietnamese, Titouan regularly uses English to
communicate in a variety of daily tasks. At the time of our interview, he was living with
international housemates from Canada, England, and France, necessitating the use of English
at home, and reports that during the first few years of his time in Vietnam he used his
knowledge of English as the primary means by which to interact with coworkers and non-
French speaking friends. He has also used English to communicate in a variety of countries
that he has visited, including "Polynesia, Italy, Ireland, Spain, and Thailand" (C.1.1).
44
Titouan is unique in this pool of participants because of his motivation for moving to
Vietnam; about four years ago, he was scheduled to move to Canada for a work opportunity,
before which he planned to travel to Vietnam and Madagascar to see friends who were living
abroad. However, after visiting some friends in Hanoi, Titouan, drawn by the atmosphere of
Hanoi and the Vietnamese lifestyle, decided to skip his planned move and return to Vietnam
after his trip to Madagascar. He expresses satisfaction with the path his life has taken, and
hopes to stay in Vietnam for "at least four years more" (C.1.11).
4.1.2 Marius Lémieux
Marius, the friend Titouan went to visit in Madagascar, is a European ELF user also
from France. However, unlike Titouan, his decision to move to Hanoi, Vietnam was
motivated by a job opportunity he was offered while living in Madagascar.
Marius is an IT specialist with a particularly international background. Born in
France, Marius and his family moved to India when he was about five years old, where he
learned English while attending an American international school until the age of ten, when
his family moved to South Korea (C.2.4). He and his brother, due to their international
environment in both India and South Korea, quickly excelled in English, using French only at
home to communicate with their parents. For this reason, Marius' parents decided to move
back to France in order to improve the boys' French language skills (C.2.10). After
completing his schooling, however, Marius felt out of place due to the lack of international
experience among members of his social circle (C.2.13); he lived in Madagascar for three
years before landing a job opportunity in his field and moving to Vietnam (C.2.13).
Aside from using English to communicate with colleagues in the context of his work
(C.2.18), Marius reports using English in everyday life (C.2.4), and is in a relationship with
an American native English speaker. He studies Vietnamese, practicing with a private teacher
once a week (C.2.17), but reports having considerable difficulty mastering the language and
relies on English or French for the majority of his interactions.
He was selected for this study due to his unique international background and the
breadth of his experiences adapting to different cultures, as well as the fact that he is the only
participant in this study who moved to his current country specifically for professional
purposes.
45
4.1.3 Valeria Zmoleková
Valeria is a European ELF user from the Czech Republic who moved to South Korea
in order to experience life in a culture which interested her. Though she studied Japanese in
her home country, she found that the visa requirements for South Korea were fewer than
those for Japan; she moved to South Korea about eight months before the time of our
interview.
Valeria's proficiency in English began in the Czech private school system, though she
expresses dissatisfaction with her English language education in school, claiming that her
teacher was only a few lessons ahead of the class in their textbook (C.3.5). Her parents'
business in the interpretation and translation business in an American company which
requires extensive travel throughout The United States, afforded Valeria considerable
additional experience speaking and listening to English as a translator and interpreter between
Czech and English in this context (C.3.27). Before moving to Korea, she graduated as a
Psychology major from New York University in Prague (C.3.19), a program taught entirely
in English that caters to an international student community (Bachelor of Psychology 2017).
She has also studied both French and German, and has a good understanding of linguistic
structures and what it takes to learn a language well - though she admits to some laziness in
this regard (C.3.18).
Though she has a background in Czech and Japanese, it is English which has been
most useful to her in her international experience, both while traveling and living abroad, and
is the language she relies on to accomplish everyday tasks and build relationships.
Valeria is unique among the participants in this study in that she is not only well-
traveled, but has a background in Psychology which affords her a unique perspective on what
it means to understand and adapt to a foreign culture. In addition, and perhaps as a result of
this, she possesses a strong interpersonal communicative ability, as might be expected of
somebody with her background.
4.1.4 Nobuyuki Yokoyama
Unlike Valeria, Nobuyuki only began traveling about three years ago as part of his
current job as a film editor. Like Marius, he attended an American international school for
46
most of his childhood; in contrast, however, he has only ever lived in his native country,
Japan. Noboyuki is one of two Asian ELF users who participated in this study.
Nobuyuki's background is perhaps the most unusual within this group of participants.
He cites his parents' fascination with the English language as the main reason he attended an
American international school in his hometown (C.4.2). As a result of this, he has an
international circle of friends for whom English is the primary language of communication
(C.4.2).
While he uses Japanese to speak to his parents and conduct daily tasks like going to
shops and interacting with locals, it is English which he speaks with his sister, with whom he
was living at the time of this interview (C.4.3), and international friends from school who
come from a variety of backgrounds. He is also an active member of several bands, and
spends much of his time interacting with his French, Canadian, Japanese, Panamanian and
Mexican bandmates (C.4.10).
Nobuyuki has a truly unique perspective as a highly proficient ELF user with limited
travel experience. He is also the only participant in this study who does not have any
experience learning another language, as he feels English is generally enough for the contexts
in which he currently needs to communicate with others. His thoughts on the traditional
aspects of Japanese culture like formality and ritual (C.4.15) are also a point of comparison
with the European ELF users in this study, who cite these as the most immediate differences
between the European and Asian cultures.
4.1.5 Yumiko Nakanishi
Yumiko is another Japanese ELF user who has used English as part of her academic
studies, but this time abroad in both Germany and Edinburgh.
A mixed-media artist, Yumiko learned English in the Japan. However, unlike
Nobuyuki, her English language skills were attained during her time as a student in the
Japanese public school system. At the time of this interview she was writing her Master's
thesis in English at her university in Germany.
Like all the other participants, she uses English to facilitate communication and forge
relationships with her international classmates, who come from countries such as Japan, The
United States, England, Finland, China, France, Germany, Mexico, South Africa, Korea,
Portugal, and Ireland (C.5.12; C.5.13), though she primarily communicates with her
47
university classmates in Germany in German (C.5.12), a fact which she attributes more to
being in Germany than to her German language skills (C.5.13).
Yumiko was chosen for this study as she is the only participant out of these five ELF
users to have moved to her country of residence for academic purposes. Additionally, she has
a lower level of proficiency in English than other participants in this study, which I felt was
important to include contrasts between ELF users at different levels of proficiency.
4.2 Analysis of Interviews with ELF Users
The interviews I conducted with five ELF users, and our discussions regarding issues
of personal linguistic and cultural backgrounds, experiences as English language learners,
and the usage of English in the everyday interactions in which they engage in their
communities, served as a means by which to explore these myriad issues in light of how these
ELF users perceive their own abilities, experiences, and goals. The similarities between these
individuals, despite their differences, is a testament to the concept of typicality amidst
diversity that allows us to consider ELF users part of one community despite the variability
seen in the use of English as a lingua franca in the modern world.
The following sections will explore, first, those areas in which this group of ELF
users differ, and, second, the ways in which their perspectives and experiences are
nevertheless similar.
4.2.1 Differences between ELF Users
The five ELF users interviewed for this study fall into two basic categories: Asian and
European. However, they differ in several other, less obvious ways.
4.2.1.1 Motivation for Moving to a Foreign Country
As mentioned in section 4.1, the five ELF users represented in this study differ widely
in their motivations for moving to a foreign country. From general curiosity for another
culture and environment (e.g. Valeria and Titouan), to professional (e.g. Marius and
Nobuyuki) and academic (e.g. Yumiko) motivations, the contexts in which these users must
engage with and use the English language has great implications for their overall success as
ELF users and their own perception of their abilities and goals.
48
4.2.1.2 Cultural Background
Second, participants differ in both their cultural and linguistic background. The array
of backgrounds presented in this study serve to illustrate the necessary variability of ELF
through a greater understanding of the contexts in which it is used.
The two Asian ELF users here, Nobuyuki and Yumiko, both share an L1 and are
originally from smaller cities in Japan. However, they had very different experiences in their
formative years. Where Yumiko had a traditional upbringing, attended a Japanese public
school, and grew up speaking Japanese both at home and in school, Nobuyuki grew up in the
context of an American international school, surrounded by both international families and
the use of English in social settings beyond its teaching in the classroom.
Similar differences can be seen among the three European ELF users in this study.
While both Titouan and Marius are French and, in fact, from the same city, Titouan spent the
entirety of his childhood and teenage years in France, only venturing out of the country as an
adult. Marius, on the other hand, left France at the age of five and grew up in international
communities in India for ten years, and South Korea for another five. He attended American
international schools in both these countries, only experiencing the French public school
system from the age of 15 until he graduated from university. Our third European ELF user,
Valeria, likewise grew up in her home country, Czech Republic, but traveled extensively
throughout her childhood as a result of her parents' work in translation and interpretation. She
attended private schools at both the elementary and university level, obtaining her Bachelor's
degree from an American university in Prague.
4.2.1.3 Level of English Proficiency
Finally, these five ELF users differ in their level of English proficiency. I have
evaluated the range of English language proficiency for this study as between levels A2 and
C2 according to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR)
scale (CEFR 2017). With over a decade of experience in ELT in international contexts, I felt
prepared to handle interactions with ELF users at a broad range of proficiency levels, and
intentionally selected participants who exemplify different levels in order to get a wider
49
picture of how ELF users from different linguistic backgrounds might find it easy or difficult
to adjust to certain contexts. The specific factors by which I evaluated the following
proficiency levels include, for example, grammatical awareness and usage of various
constructions, breadth of vocabulary, fluency in speaking, and the degree to which
pronunciation affects intelligibility.
The results of this evaluation are relevant insofar as they function as a point of
comparison between the participants in this study, and may have affected the degree of
nuance with which the participants communicate with me during the interview. More
importantly, each participants' level of proficiency can be used to put their unique
experiences in adapting to a foreign country into context.
Due to the nature of this comparison, I will present my personal evaluation of each
participant's English proficiency level based on our spoken interaction in turn; they are
presented here in the order in which they were introduced above.
Titouan
At the time of his interview, I would evaluate Titouan's level of English proficiency as
bordering a highly functional B1 and lower B2. His spoken English is heavily accented
which, while not necessarily a problem in and of itself, does lead to some communicative
difficulties (e.g. B.1.5). While he is able to express his thoughts and opinions with a relative
degree of success, there were often some lengthy pauses as he sought a specific word, for
example, or some particular turn of phrase. There were also certain "Frenchisms" that found
their way into his speech, such as his use of the word "firm" to mean "strong" (B.1.6), or
"getting up" to mean improving (B.1.6), though these are no doubt easily understand by
members of his social circle.
Titouan mentions his desire to improve his Vietnamese ( ), as well as the fact that he
finds it easier to understand a French-speaker's English than a Vietnamese-speaker's English
(B.1.10); neither point here comes as a surprise, especially in light of his evaluation of the
Vietnamese as "[not] speak[ing] English so good" (B.1.10). While the character of his
English may make it challenging for another NNS to understand every word Titouan says, he
is nevertheless able to communicate effectively in his daily life, and has been successful in
using ELF while traveling and among friends.
50
Marius
While some errors are present in his speech, these are generally conventional and not
significant to the point that they negatively affect his ability to communicate; Marius is a
solid C1 English speaker with a good foundation in the English language and, given his
experience in international contexts, as all as his use of English in interpersonal relationships
on a daily basis, this is as expected.
When asked about potential difficulties communicating with someone in real-world
contexts, Marius highlights his ability to adjust to the English level of his professional
colleagues who might only be saying "half the words they should be saying or saying some
words wrong" (B.2.18), and his subsequent attempts to "try to guide them" using "a lot of
hand gestures and drawings, sketches, and things" (B.2.18). In contrast to Titouan, with
whom he shares a nationality, Marius' French accent is minimal, and his lexical repertoire
extensive.
He alludes to French-speakers' preference for French in everyday interactions, and the
greater "effort" it takes for them to speak English (B.2.31) in such a way that it is clear
Marius is aware, and appreciative, of his above-average ability to communicate in English.
Valeria
Thanks to her frequent, varied use of English, Valeria is a strong B2-level English
user overall, while her receptive abilities are well within the level of C1 proficiency. She
herself attributes having little difficulty with different accents to her university experience
with strongly-accented classmates from, for example, Slovakia, Russia, and Azerbaijan
(B.3.19). While her speech is punctuated with the occasional grammatical errors, she relies
on her considerable communicative ability to express her thoughts and opinions effectively,
though not always succinctly.
In terms of her ability to communicate in international ELF contexts, she reports
using English 99% of the time (B.3.16) and, like Marius, refers to Koreans' language skills,
specifically the fact "that their pronunciation is not great and it's really hard for them to put
sentences together" (B.3.17) as being the biggest detriment to successful interactions.
51
Nobuyuki
Nobuyuki's frequent usage of English results in what is a fully functional C1 level of
proficiency in English perhaps bordering C2 level. His listening comprehension is
unparalleled in this field of participants, even with poorly structured questions (e.g. my non-
question in B.4.13), and his productive abilities nearly flawless. Due to his exemplary
command of English, he expresses frustration at both the knowledge and level of English in
Japan, which he considers "one of the most modern countries" (B.4.12) despite the locals'
lack of experience with foreigners, and the school system which he blames for teaching "a lot
of vocabulary [which learners] can't actually use" (B.4.12).
Nobuyuki attributes both of these observations to an intrinsic "shyness" in Japanese
culture, which causes reluctance in trying to communicate with foreigners, whether in their
home country or abroad (B.4.12). He considers himself more adept in international contexts,
due in large part to his demonstrably high level of English proficiency.
Yumiko
Based on my spoken interaction with Yumiko, I would evaluate her level of
proficiency in English around the high A2 to low B1 levels, though she likely tests higher on
evaluations of her written work; she herself admits that writing in English is far easier for her
than speaking due to her classroom experiences as an English language learner (B.5.21).
Twice during our interview she had to refer to a translation dictionary to find a particular
word (e.g. stable in B.5.23), and in several instances I had to provide a word when it
appeared she was having considerable difficulty coming up with it on her own (e.g. score in
B.5.16).
Yumiko, like Nobuyuki, atttributes her lack of practical English knowledge to the
Japanese public school system, and cites little application of skills (B.5.9) in classrooms more
focused on the acquisition of grammatical structures necessary to "pass the examination for
entrance for university" (B.5.9). She admits to having had a hard time when she first moved
abroad as a result of the inadequate English language preparation in her home country
(B.5.8), and in many cases still struggles to interact with locals in her current foreign context,
though feels that she improves with each interaction (B.5.21).
52
4.2.2 Similarities between ELF Users
Despite considerable differences in linguistic and cultural background, the ELF users
with whom I spoke nevertheless exhibit several general similarities and are in agreement on a
number of topics regarding the usage of ELF in European and Asian contexts.
All of the participants in this study have achieved a level of proficiency in English
which enables them to operate successfully in their respective communities and for their
specific purposes on a daily basis, whether at home or abroad. Despite the difficulties they
might encounter in interactions, brought about by varying linguistic strengths and
weaknesses, and the different contexts in which they acquired their English language skills,
they are able to go about their daily lives with relative ease. This resulting confidence has at
least partially led to a willingness to step out of the comfort of their native culture and into
new, foreign experiences with little hesitation, if for nothing else, simply with the goal of
"try[ing] something new" (C.2.13).
Subsequent success in these foreign contexts has afforded each of these ELF users a
deep appreciation of the importance of understanding others in light of their alternative
cultures, languages, and traditions. While certain aspects of a foreign culture may seem odd
at first, such as the near-constant burning of paper and incense in Vietnamese neighborhood
shops to honor Buddhist gods (C.1.25), or the reticence of German shopkeepers to smile
(C.5.5), ELF users are eager to engage with the local culture (C.2.14) and feel a desire to
understand people both in a general sense (C.4.10) and to a greater degree (C.3.30; C.2.33).
This can be seen, for example, by ELF users' individual identification of the linguistic
means of showing respect and an adherence to rules regarding the observance of social
hierarchy as among the most identifiable differences between Asian and European cultures, a
point which four
3
out of the five ELF users in this study bring up in connection to challenges
involved in learning the foreign language (C.1.17), which is inextricably linked to the local
culture, and interactions with locals which "affect how people talk with you and interact with
you" (C.2.21) (see also C.3.13; C.4.15). ELF users appreciate that the need to understand and
3
Unfortunately, I interviewed Yumiko before finding out about this phenomenon, and didn't think to ask her
about this during our interview. We do, however, discuss the difficulty she has in finding English words that can
fully express certain Japanese words that have layers of meaning and, thus, are difficult to explain in anything
less than three or four sentences. The example she gives is the Japanese word yome, which translates roughly as
"the subservient daughter in law who has a low position in the family and who must obey and serve all others in
the household" (C.5.19). While clearly related to Japanese conceptions of social hierarchy, this is not the same
thing as that discussed in this section.
53
adapt to cultural differences like the formality and ritual exhibited in Asian culture is just as
important as learning vocabulary.
4.2.2.1 Points of Agreement
In addition to these similarities, the ELF users in this study agree on several points.
These points were formulated by the author of this study in response to topics that came up
organically in each of the interviews, and worded to reflect the stance taken by the ELF users
in this study as a group.
1. The English language is a necessary tool in a number of domains in today's
international world.
Our five ELF users report using English with various individuals in a number of
domains, including:
o acquaintances in a number of contexts, including travel (C.3.29, C.3.30; C.4.1; C.5.11)
o colleagues (C.2.18; C.4.3)
o customers and clients (C.1.8, C.1.9; C.2.26; C.3.8, C.3.19; C.4.5)
o classmates and teachers (C.2.4, C.2.8; C.3.5, C.3.19; C.4.2; C.5.8, C.5.13)
o friends (C.1.12; C.2.4; C.3.19; C.4.11; C.5.13)
o housemates (C.1.8)
o and, in some cases, even with siblings (C.2.4; C.4.3, C.4.10)
The degree to which ELF is reportedly relied upon in the daily lives of these five
individuals demonstrates the pervasive nature of the English language in today's international
world.
2. Clear generational differences exist in the level of English knowledge and the ability to
use English in both their native and foreign countries.
Our ELF users also agree on the fact that there are clear generational differences in
the level of English knowledge and linguistic ability in their native and chosen countries of
residence. Titouan, in discussing the typical French reluctance and inability to speak English,
differentiates between the absolute lack of English language skills in French people around
40 years and older, and the knowledge of "just the basics" possessed by younger generations
54
"who cannot stand to be [in] conversation, but ... know the basic foods, drinks, [and have the
ability to] ask directions [but] not speak politics" (C.1.13). Marius notices the same
distinction, but this time regarding the English language skills of the Vietnamese generations
"who want their children to speak English, so don't learn themselves" (C.2.2). In contrast to
the French population, Marius expresses surprise at the enthusiasm with which younger
Vietnamese generations approach the task of learning English, describing them as "really
motivated, and [able to] speak quite well compared to older generations" (C.2.2).
Valeria and Nobuyuki have likewise noticed this phenomenon (C.3.30; C.4.14).
Valeria cites it as one of her main motivations to learn Korean, as "all these older people"
who run the neighborhood markets "don't speak English, but... are very impressed when [she
says] something in Korean" (C.3.30). She reports having more difficulty communicating with
them in English (C.3.30), than is the case with her peers (C.3.17).
This point suggests that different generations have different goals for English
language acquisition and different conceptions of what they consider to be sufficient
knowledge of the language.
3. Successful ELF communication necessitates awareness not just of an ELF user's own
linguistic ability, but the linguistic ability of those around them, and often requires use of
accommodation strategies and adaptability in linguistic expression for the benefit of these
other individuals.
The European ELF users in this study appear to have substantial communicative
difficulties with Asian friends and colleagues. While he feels like his English is "okay" in a
number of contexts (C.1.21), Titouan, for example, mentions difficulties communicating with
the staff at the restaurant where he works, who complain that he "speaks too fast and they
don't know all [the] words" (C.1.15) he uses. This requires a use of "lower English" (C.1.8), a
phenomenon echoed by Valeria, who expresses difficulty "know[ing] what level of English to
use" (C.3.19) in social interactions in South Korea. Titouan also mentions some confusion
between similar words; as he says, experience with this type of misunderstanding allows him
to already "know the chicken is the kitchen" (C.1.15) in his professional context, or that the
Vietnamese often pronounce the word tomorrow as "tumazo" (C.1.10).
Similar difficulties require commonly-cited pragmatic strategies for communicating
meaning, such as code-switching in the case of Valeria's encounters with young Korean and
Japanese friends, in which she relies on a mixture of English, Korean, and Japanese (C.3.20)
to make herself understood, a strategy which Titouan (C.1.15, C.1.16) also makes frequent
55
use of. Where code-switching fails due to the exhaustion of an ELF user's knowledge of
another language, use of alternate strategies like "a lot of hand gestures, drawing, [and]
sketching" (C.2.18) can be used even in the very technical field of IT that Marius often finds
himself encountering these types of difficulties.
This frequent use of accommodation and adaptation results in what feels to these European
ELF users as a "deterioration" of their English (C.3.19), as they find themselves constantly
lowering the level of their speech in order to make themselves understood, relying only on
"basic [words and] very short sentences" (C.3.19; see also C.1.16; C.2.18).
It is not only the European ELF users who describe Asian varieties of English as "not
that great" (C.3.17), however. Both Yumiko and Nobuyuki are well aware of the vast divide
between levels of proficiency typically demonstrated by Asian ELF users and their European
counterparts. On a personal level, Yumiko's realization that she couldn't tell the difference
between forms of the verb to be (C.5.10) upon her arrival in Germany was a fact she
attributes to the fact that "the Japanese English education system is horrible" (C.5.9). She
describes a passive classroom environment where students "just listen [to] what the teacher
say[s]" and "maybe [...] have a few conversation classes in school, (but not so many)"
(C.5.9), with the ultimate goal of preparing students to pass university entrance examinations.
Nobuyuki, though he has benefitted from his exposure to English at a young age and
its use in a number of contexts, likewise identifies a core problem in the Japanese usage of
English, but attributes this to failures at the level of usage rather than that of acquisition, as he
has noticed that Japanese people do, in fact, "memorize a lot of words" (C.4.8). In his mind,
the issue of a lack of practical English knowledge is the fault of "a general, unspoken rule"
(C.4.8) in Japanese culture not "to go out of [one's] way and not to bother anybody" (C.4.8)
that leads to shyness and reservation in communication, a fact which has severe implications
for language acquisition if we accept the premise that language must be used and practiced to
become an effective tool for communication.
This signals a need for the explicit teaching and development of pragmatic skills, such
as accommodation and code-switching, in the ELF-minded classroom.
4. The language skills demonstrated by teaching professionals in the traditional school
systems of both Asia and Europe, along with a reliance on antiquated methods of language
instruction, are the greatest detriment to successful language acquisition in the classroom.
Language classrooms, according to all of the five ELF users in this study, are missing
out on valuable opportunities to practice practical language skills, due at least in part to
56
teachers' linguistic and pedagogical skills, which leave something to be desired. From
Yumiko's lamentation of the methodology used by English teachers in the Japanese schools
system described above (see C.5.9, C.5.10), to Titouan's assertion that he learned more
English in his one year living in Australia "than [he] did in his six or seven years at school"
(C.1.1), only the two ELF users who learned English in international contexts while attending
American international schools failed to voice discontent with their acquisition of English.
The primary reason given for these ELF users' dissatisfaction with their classroom
experiences in English is the level of proficiency exhibited by the teacher in the classroom,
who often had little applicable experience speaking the language. Within the Czech private
school system, for example, Valeria studied English with a teacher who, she reports, knew
less English than she did (C.3.5). Titouan, in a discussion during our interview about the
current job market for foreigners in Hanoi, mentioned that "every English native speaker you
meet is an English teacher (C.1.24), and further observes that any English NS can be an
English teacher, regardless of their qualifications, as long as they fit the stereotypical "look"
of a westerner (C.1.24). While he admits that things are changing now, and language schools
are at least trying "to get people with a [teaching] certificate," these changes have only come
about in the last "two or three years" (C.1.24).
This suggests that the quality of education available to potential ELF users in their
home countries' school systems is insufficient for the many purposes in which these
individuals need to use the English language.
4.3 Analysis of Interviews with ELT Professionals
In order to bring our language classrooms into the modern world, ELT professionals
need to make decisions in the classroom regarding the methods by which English language
skills are taught in light of what their individual students will need in those contexts in which
those students are likely to encounter English. With these concerns in mind, I conducted
interviews with two ELT professionals with experience in international contexts to see what
is currently being done to address these issues, as well as to identify areas in which further
pedagogical development might serve to better address the needs and concerns of our ELF
users.
57
4.3.1 Raymond Sayward
Ray is an American ELT professional with a Master's degree in the Teaching of
English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL) and over a decade of experience in ESL
and EFL teaching (D.1.3; see 2.2). Originally from Boston, he has lived and taught English in
Boston, Taiwan, and South Korea. He recently moved to Shanghai, China where he is
running a newly-launched online teaching company which specializes in general, academic,
and professional English teaching.
Though he began his career in the classroom, Ray's most recent post was as an
administrator in a state-funded language program catering to the Asian community living in
Boston's Chinatown neighborhood (D.1.12). In addition to his day job, he is a frequent
contributor in the TESOL community, writes several publications a year and has presented at
a number of TESOL conferences. His areas of interest include adult education, pronunciation
and grammar instruction, curriculum development, and assessment, with recent publications
dealing with the use of authentic resources in the classroom, the importance of practical skill
application in a classroom setting, the use of corpora in adult education, the pitfalls of
standardized testing, and the evaluation of students for placement in language programs.
Ray was chosen for this study due to his considerable professional experience in ELT
in a range of contexts, particularly the breadth of his experience in EFL teaching abroad and
his involvement with the Asian community in Boston. Due to his teaching experience, Ray
makes a great program administrator because he understands how the classroom works and
what obstacles and challenges teachers are faced with every day. His experience as both a
teacher in the classroom and the administrator of a language program gives him a unique
perspective from which to consider the topic of ELF and its many unique characteristics.
4.3.2 Klara Krieger
Klara is a Swiss ELT professional with experience as both an English teacher and
teacher trainer at one of the most rigorous teacher certification programs in Prague, Czech
Republic. Klara is an L2 English speaker, and describes herself as a non-native non-local in
Prague’s ELT community. Due to personal experiences being discriminated against in this
regard, she is a staunch supporter of equality regarding teaching opportunities for NNESTs.
While relatively new in the field, she has presented at conferences for the
International Association of Teachers of English as a Foreign Language (IATEFL), promoting
58
equity in hiring practices. Additionally, she has been involved in a number of studies and
publications regarding ELF, nativespeakerism, and the promotion of equal hiring practices
among language schools in the ELT community.
Klara was chosen for this study due to her experience in ELF and ELT in a European
context, and has an intriguing perspective of the needs of ELF users as a language learner,
teacher, teacher trainer, and proficient ELF user herself.
4.4 Different Perspectives, Same Goals
The two ELT professionals I interviewed for this project have had very different
experiences and voice very distinct perspectives regarding the teaching of English in
international contexts. Nevertheless, similarities between their values, especially their
concerns as individuals tasked with providing effective language instruction to a wide range
of students, demonstrate that they share at least two goals at the professional level: (1)
meeting students' needs, and (2) providing better quality language education. These goals,
like in the points discussed in section 4.2.2.1, result from topics that came up in each of the
interviews with ELT professionals, in which the interviewees evaluated these goals as
important aspects in their roles as educators in international contexts.
4.4.1 Meeting Students' Needs
There are two levels of involvement for an ELT professional in attempting to meet
students needs. First, ELT professionals must be able to identify these needs. Having
identified the needs of English language learners, ELT professionals must then find ways of
incorporating activities and tasks designed to meet these needs into the classroom experience.
The identification of students' needs depends primarily on the context in which
students will need to use the English language. In an ESL setting, these needs are often
practical; going to "the grocery store, the doctor, [speaking with] their kids' teachers" (D.1.6).
In EFL, practical needs are sometimes cast aside as the energy of teaching often goes into the
preparation of students for next steps, such as standardized tests that will ensure their entry
into universities (D.1.10; see also C.5.9). However, as we can see in the many reported
domains in which ELF users need to use the English language in international contexts (see
59
4.2.2.1), an ELF-informed approach to teaching must prepare students for both expected and
unexpected domains of use. Students need to be prepared to engage in classroom discussions
(C.5.17) as easily as they can answer tourists' questions about how to get somewhere
(C.1.13), or respond to shop owners who don't possess highly functional English language
skills (C.3.30).
How should teachers engage this ELF-informed approach to language learning in the
classroom? As an ELT professional myself, I know that authentic situational practice is more
beneficial to my students than grammar drills or textbook reading, and that listening to a NS
lecture on a topic, no matter how interesting, does not require the same skills as listening to a
NNS lecture on a topic, or engaging another NNS during a conference call via telephone with
patchy reception. Unfortunately, bringing authentic practice into the classroom is a
commonly expounded but often poorly implemented classroom strategy. ELT professionals
like Ray and Klara encourage teachers to find new, creative ways to implement practical
training and real-world skills into the classroom experience, such as replicating the
experience students might have in their daily jobs (e.g. working the deli counter or cash
register at a local supermarket) in order to increase their level of confidence in dealing with
such situations (D.1.19).
4.4.2 Providing Better Quality Language Education
ELF users' evaluations of their previous English classroom experiences in their home
countries signal a need to provide better quality language education (C.1.1; C.3.5; C.5.9,
C.5.10) at every level of the education system. As both Ray (D.1.22) and Klara (D.2.21) point
out, a good teacher often "makes the difference between positive student outcomes and
failure" (D.1.22), and is a starting point from which to consider the reformation of current
ELT practices which may fall short in preparing students for ELF interactions in international
contexts.
The comments made by both the ELF users and the ELT professionals in this study
seem to suggest the need for a shift in the hiring practices of ELT programs within the school
system, as well as in private language schools, particularly the need to hire qualified and
experienced English teachers. One of the major issues in this regard seems to be that of the
nativeness of the teachers found in these contexts.
60
Our ELF users found NNESTs in their home countries to be the source of the
problem, while programs around the world currently tout the native speaker as the best model
for English language skills (D.2.8). While this may be true, being a good model of a language
user does not necessarily mean that you are the most qualified individual to teach that model.
As Klara points out, the level of awareness NSs often posses with regard to their own
language is "on average ...poor to very poor" (D.2.8). While the point of teacher training
programs like TEFL Worldwide in Prague or Oxford House TEFL is to teach individuals how
to effectively teach a language like English, the typical four-week course is not really the
ideal amount of time to adequately teach English grammar to NSs, and then also teach these
NSs how to teach (D.2.8, D.2.9); in other words, these schools lose a lot of valuable teaching
practice time to the development of strong foundations of grammatical knowledge.
A possible solution to the pervasive problem of inexperienced teachers cited by our
ELF users would be, as our ELT professionals suggest, for language schools to reconsider
their current hiring practices, and begin hiring only highly qualified teachers, including both
NESTs and NNESTs alike. This would go a long way toward creating some healthy
competition in the ELT community, requiring native speakers to possess qualifications
beyond the nationality stated on the cover of their passport in order to teach a language as
important as English in today's international context. Ray did this as the administrator of a
state-funded community English program, and, though he initially received negative feedback
from both the state and the students in the course, he insists that NNEST can make just as
effective teachers as NESTs, and sometimes even more so (D.1.16, D.1.17). Klara agrees that
"you don't have to be a native speaker" (D.2.12), but maintains that a good teacher must
possess a high level of English in order to be effective, whether they are a native speaker or
not (D.2.12).
The important question to ask, then, if being a native speaker is not a sufficiently
indicative criterion of what it means to be a good English teacher, is what qualities do good
teachers possess? In this regard, both of our ELT professionals are in complete agreement.
According to Ray and Klara, good teachers are individuals who feel secure in their job
(D.1.22; D.2.13) and have a steady support system in place. A good teacher should possess a
high level of language skill and linguistic awareness (D.2.21), the ability to apply that
knowledge themselves (D.2.21), and an ability to transmit that information to students using
effective methodology in the classroom (D.1.19). Good teachers are often individuals who
not only understand where students are coming from, both culturally and in terms of the
struggles faced by language learners (D.1.15), but are also individuals who know what
61
students will need to know in order to achieve success in their linguistic encounters (D.2.8)
and is able to keep these needs in mind to work toward the mutual goal of developing
practical language skills for use in a number of domains in international ELF settings
(D.1.19).
62
5 Discussion
It is important to note that the conclusions reached in this study can only be
generalized so far as they apply to the specific ELF users and ELT professionals mentioned
here, both individually and considered as one group. Greater generalization requires a larger
sample size, though the similarities and differences encountered here can be indicative of
larger trends and, consequently, a good place to start for future studies.
That said, the interviews with both ELF users and ELT professionals echo several key
topics in the field of ELF research. First, ELF is very much used as a “functional variety”
(Dunková 2014:16) for our ELF users in their communities of practice. A necessary tool in
their daily lives, English facilitates interactions and experience in a number of domains (see
4.2.2.1), despite the fact that these individuals all live in countries belonging to Kachru’s
(1985) expanding circle and interact primarily with individuals who do not share their L1.
The ELF users consulted here, in fact, live, work, and study in international
environments, and frequently find themselves in contact situations where they must juggle
the linguistic patterns of speakers of multiple L1s. This requires that they be adept at altering
their own variety of English on a near-constant basis when engaged in these types of
interactions within speech communities which, as Seidlhofer (2009a:238) asserts, cannot be
defined in the traditional sense (see 2.3.3).
As a result of previous experiences with miscommunication and misunderstanding in
these settings, our ELF users constantly monitor others’ understanding during the course of
their interactions. Additionally, to function successfully in these communities and to avoid
these moments of miscommunication (Mauranen 2006b), our ELF users report preemptively
employing strategies such as accommodation and leveling to make themselves understood by
other ELF users who might not have an equal level of proficiency (Firth 2009:162). In the
same way, occurrences of “cooperative strategies” (Firth 2009:149), such as code-switching
when their level of proficiency in the other speaker’s L1 allows it, gesturing, and even
sketching are reportedly frequent, regardless of the context in which these ELF users find
themselves.
The strategies employed by ELF users discussed above and in previous sections are
not restricted to casual domains of use such as group interactions among friends, however. As
discussed in section 2.5.1, English is the lingua franca of the modern business world, and
experiences such as those had by Marius and Nobuyuki, who both work at larger
multinational companies and use English as their primary language of interaction in
63
professional contexts, attests this. Even Titouan and Valeria, who work in the service
industry at a more local level in their respective countries of residence, use English at work to
communicate with both colleagues and customers. For our ELF users, professional
interactions are indeed “content-oriented” (Jenkins et al. 2011:298), and require that they use
every tool at their disposal, from linguistic strategies such as code-switching to gesturing and
drawing, discussed above.
Participants in this study have also used English in another common domain of use
for ELF speakers, that of the modern academic setting discussed in 2.5.2. While Marius,
Titouan, and Nobuyuki attended universities in their L1, both Marius and Nobuyuki
completed the majority of their education in English at American international schools, in
India and South Korea, and Japan, respectively. Valeria and Yumiko, on the other hand,
completed their basic education in their L1, but have both used English as their primary
language of communication in the university setting, Valeria in her home country at an
American university in Prague, and Yumiko abroad in both Edinburgh, Scotland and Berlin,
Germany.
All of our ELF users report sharing the classroom with L1 and other L2 English
speakers originating in various different countries, requiring that they become accustomed to
diverse phonetic and lexicogrammatical styles. Marius and Nobuyuki, both of whom had
very immersive experiences at a young age, don’t report having many difficulties
understanding either their classmates or their teachers; Yumiko, on the other hand, reports
struggling in the classroom due to her level of proficiency, particularly during her time in
Scotland, during which she was surrounded by L1 English speakers with “strong accents and
specific saying[s]” or idioms (C.5.4). She reports often “giving up” in trying to understand
what they were saying to her and just nodding along with the conversation until challenged
(C.5.4), but claims to have had an easier time there due to the attitude of the Scottish people
as compared to Germans, who she finds “[too] serious” and describes as “strict, honest, and
strict” (C.5.24), suggesting she has more in common with her classmates in Berlin, mostly
other L2 English speakers, than she did in Edinburgh.
Our ELF users come from different backgrounds and, despite their similar
experiences living in foreign countries, have different levels of proficiency in the English
language when judged by NS standards. Throughout the interviews, the participants in this
study each produced typical phonological and lexicogrammatical variations that are common
to users of ELF. For example, all five ELF users mispronounced the word “pronunciation”
(i.e. /prəˈnaʊnsiˈeɪʃən/ rather than /prənʌnsiˈeɪʃən/) in utterances during our conversations
64
(e.g. C.2.17) which, while perfectly comprehensible and maintaining both nuclear (see LFC,
Jenkins 1998) and lexical stress, is atypical by NS standards.
Other unusual features of lexis and grammar, according to NS standards, cropped up
from time to time. For example,
o “I don't feel the pollution much even though it is hot.” (C.1.11)
o “…it was pretty different contrast from Vietnam…” (C.2.14)
o “…it's took few years that we even could learn English…” (C.3.5)
o “…and individual is at the bottom of the list…” (C.4.16)
o “…in Japanese, my style to have the conversation is a bit changed…” (C.5.25)
Non-standard lexical and grammatical choices like these cause minimal confusion with both
L1 and L2 speakers alike, regardless of whether L2 speaker share the same “similect”
(Mauranen 2012:28). As mentioned in 2.4.2, they are usually the product of translanguaging
(Seidlhofer 2011; Cogo 2015; Jenkins 2017).
When asked about their early English language training, the three ELF users who did
not have the benefit of immersive educational experiences in English, Titouan, Valeria, and
Yumiko, each expresses dissatisfaction with their experience learning English in their
countries’ school systems.
Despite their overall success in using ELF to adapt to various contexts in linguistically
and culturally discrete regions, it cannot be said that the five ELF users consulted for this
study have gained most of their applicable linguistic and pragmatic skills in ELF in the
English language classroom alone. On the contrary, each of these individuals demonstrates
the extent to which supplementing classroom instruction with real-world experience and
near-constant practice of these linguistic and pragmatic skills can affect their ultimate success
as ELF users.
The combination of points 1-4 in section 4.2.2.1, however, suggests that popular,
traditional methods of language instruction that might have been considered sufficient in
preparing students for (more limited) contact situations in the past are no longer enough for
the contexts in which people today need to use the language.
The question for ELT professionals is whether or not there is anything that can be
done pedagogically to better prepare individuals like these for the contexts in which they are
likely to find themselves. Our ELF users identify, for example, certain sociocultural values
and tendencies as most difficult to adjust to (e.g. C.3.10), and cite difficulties which arise due
65
to differing levels of proficiency within the ELF community (e.g. C.1.21; C.2.18). However,
is a dearth of ELF-informed teaching material in both teachers’ and students’ ELT resources.
If these are the concerns of ELF users in the expanding circle today, then ways of adapting to
and overcoming these obstacles should, it follows, be addressed in the English language
classroom.
As discussed in section 2.6, research on the topic of ELF, including the present study,
suggests that an ELF-centered approach to language instruction in the expanding-circle
classroom is a more logical choice than traditional instructional methods, as more explicit
attention to the principles, features, and skills required in ELF interactions would better
prepare students for real-world experiences. However, as the results of the interviews
presented here with both ELF users and ELT professionals indicate, the ELT community
could do more to implement the principles and features of ELF interactions into the
classroom experience.
More consistent use of authentic materials in the classroom, in addition to the
development of skills needed for practical tasks, such as the examples discussed in section
4.4.1, would go a long way to making L2 English speakers feel more comfortable in the
situations in which they often find themselves. Increased time devoted to the development in
practical skills, in turn, leads to better quality education in expanding circle contexts. This
would improve the degree of satisfaction of ELF users like Titouan, Valeria, and Yumiko,
who cite deficiencies in both the knowledge and experience of their past English teachers, as
well as the use of antiquated methods of language instruction, as the primary failures of their
English language education systems in their home countries.
In order to alleviate these concerns, current hiring practices in the expanding circle
which favor sometimes-underqualified NESTs who will accept lower wages over qualified
NESTs and NNESTs should be reconsidered. While language education can be a profitable
venture in the expanding circle, it should not come at a cost to sound educational practices.
Additional studies ascertaining the concerns and opinions of ELF users and ELT
professionals are needed to achieve more generalizable results, as one of the major limitations
of this study is the small sample size. Both Europe and Asia are large geographical regions
comprising multiple linguistic and cultural groups. While I attempted to explore my research
questions with the help of the most diverse group of participants available, I was forced to
keep my sample size to a minimum in order to ensure the successful completion of this work
by the indicated deadline, but it is not possible to achieve fully generalized insights with a
66
sample size of only five ELF users and two ELT professionals. More voices in every aspect
of this study would lead to greater insights into this topic of research.
Further limitations regarding the sample size of the present study include the fact that
there were two respondents for each of two countries, Japan and France. While the
participants from each of these countries had very different experiences when compared with
each other, greater diversity may have resulted in the opportunity for additional conclusions.
The present study also fails to account for other major contenders in the global ELF
community boasting robust ELT communities, especially those of the Middle East and Latin
America. Future studies comparing the reality of Asian and European ELF users with those of
the Middle East, Latin America, and others, would give a greater overall picture of what
comparisons can be made between the whole of the ELF community.
Another interesting point of comparison for future studies, given that the definition of
ELF utilized here does not exclude NS, would be a qualitative comparison of how NS and
NNS might differ with regard to their needs as ELF users in international contact situations,
within the expanding circle as well as the inner and outer circles.
67
6 Conclusion
The globalization of the modern world and the prominent position of English within it
has led to a vast array of English varieties. English is used as a lingua franca around the
world to facilitate interactions that arise in contact situations in various domains involving
individuals from different linguistic and cultural backgrounds, who must use ELF to go about
their daily lives.
Due to the unique nature of the lingua franca interactions, ELF involves various
phonological, lexical, grammatical, and pragmatic features that differentiate it from L1
English interactions, and further distinguish the needs to ELF users from those of the ESL
and EFL communities in the inner and outer circles. The existence of these features indicates
a need for a different approach in the ELT classroom of the expanding circle.
In the interviews conducted in the present study, ELF users in contact situations in the
expanding circle voice several concerns indicating a need for better language preparation at
all levels of the education system and in multiple domains. While ELT professionals are
cognizant of this need, the ELT community needs to work together to provide this higher
level of instruction. This begins with acknowledging students' needs and improving hiring
practices in our schools. Individuals hired to teach English for use in ELF settings must be
highly qualified, have a firm foundation in the language, and be able to conceptualize what
students will need outside of the classroom in a number of contexts in order to prepare them
for real-world situations within the classroom. This does not require that an effective teacher
be a NEST; according to the ELT professionals consulted in this study, it is very often the
case that NNEST may actually better exemplify these characteristics in these contexts.
The field of English as a Lingua Franca research has created a movement of change in
the ELT community. Still, the current contexts in which ELF users must use the English
language necessitate further reformulation of the current realization of English language
teaching policy to ensure practical success for those ELF. An ELF-informed approach to
ELT, which begins with an analysis of the needs of L2 English learners, is the next logical
step in developing current pedagogical practices.
68
References
ACE. 2014. “The Asian Corpus of English”. Director: Andy Kirkpatrick; Researchers: W.
Lixun, J. Patkin, S. Subhan. http://corpus.ied.edu.hk/ace/.
Archibald, A., Cogo, A. & Jenkins, J. 2011. Latest trends in ELF research. Newcastle Upon
Tyne: Cambridge Scholars.
Baker, W. 2011a. Culture and identity through ELF in Asia: Fact or Fiction?. In A. Cogo,
Archibald & J. Jenkins (Eds.), Latest Trends in ELF Research. Newcastle: Cambridge
Scholars. 35-52.
Baker, W. 2011b. Global cultures and identities: Refocusing the aids of ELT in Asia through
intercultural awareness. In T. Muller, S. Herder, J. Adamson & P. Shiego Brown
(eds.), Innovating EFL education in Asia. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. 49-62.
Baker, W., & Jenkins, J. 2015. Criticising ELF. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 4 (1).
191-198.
Bhatt, Rakesh M. 2001. World Englishes. Annual Review of Anthropology 30.1. 527-550.
Björkman, B. 2009. From code to discourse in spoken ELF. In A. Mauranen & E. Ranta
(eds.), English as a Lingua Franca: Studies and Findings. Newcastle Upon Tyne:
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Bucholtz, M., and DuBois, J.W. 2017. “Transcription in Action.”
http://www.linguistics.ucsb.edu/projects/transcription/index.html.
Canagarajah, A. S. 2005. Introduction. In Canagarajah (ed.), Reclaiming the local in
language policy and practice. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. xiii–xxx.
Canagrajah, S. 2007. Lingua Franca English, Multilingual Communities, and Language
Acquistion. The Modern Language Journal 91. 923-939.
Canagarajah, A. Suresh. 2008. Reclaiming the Local in Language Policy and Practice. New
York: Routledge.
Cogo A. 2009. Accommodating difference in ELF conversations: a study of pragmatic
strategies. In Mauranen & Ranta (eds.) English as a lingua franca. Studies and
findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 254–273.
Cogo, A. 2010. Strategic use and perceptions of English as a Lingua Franca. Poznań Studies
in Contemporary Linguistics, 46(3). 295–312.
Cogo, A. 2012. ELF and super-diversity: A case study of ELF multilingual practices from a
business context. Journal of English as a Lingua Franca 1.2. 287-313.
Cogo, A. 2015. English as a Lingua Franca: Descriptions, Domains and Applications. In H.
Bowles & A. Cogo (eds.), International Perspectives on English as a Lingua Franca.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cogo, A. 2016. "3.5 English as a Lingua Franca in Europe." Investigating English in Europe.
Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Cogo, A. & Dewey, M. 2006. Efficiency in ELF Communication: From Pragmatic Motives
to Lexico-grammatical Innovation. Nordic Journal of English Studies 5(2). 59-94.
Cogo, A. & M. Dewey 2011. Analysing English as a Lingua Franca: A corpus-driven
investigation. London: Continuum.
Cook, V. J. 1992. Evidence for Multicompetence. Language Learning, 42. 557–591.
69
Crystal, D. 2000. Emerging Englishes. English Teaching Professional, 14.
Crystal, D. 2003a. English as a Global Language (2nd edition). Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Crystal, David. 2003b. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Crystal, D. 2007. English as a Global Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Deterding, D. 2010. ELF-based pronunciation teaching in China. Chinese Journal of
Applied Linguistics.
Deterding, D. & Kirkpatrick, (2006). Intelligibility and an emerging ASEAN English
lingua franca. World Englishes 25.3. 391–410.
Dunková, J. 2014. Learner goals and attitudes to mistakes from an ELT and ELF
perspective. Diplomová práce, Praha, Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Filozofická fakulta,
Ústav anglického jazyka a didaktiky.
ELFA. 2008. The Corpus of English as a Lingua Franca in Academic Settings. Director:
Anna Mauranen. http://www.helsinki.fi/elfa/elfacorpus.
Erasmus+. 2017. “Erasmus+”. European Commission.
http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/.
Eurostat. European Commission. 2017. http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/.
Firth, A. 1996. The discursive accomplishment of normality: On 'lingua franca' English and
conversation analysis. Journal of Pragmatics 26.2. 237–259.
Firth, A. 2009. The lingua franca factor. Intercultural Pragmatics 6.2. 147–170.
Goffman, E. 1956. The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life. American Sociological Review
21.5. 631.
Halliday, M.A.K. 1967. Linguistics and the Teaching of English. in James N. Britton (ed.)
Talking and writing: A Handbook for English Teachers. London: Methuen. pp.80-90.
House, J. 1999. Misunderstanding in intercultural communication: Interactions in English as
lingua franca and the myth of mutual intelligibility. In C. Gnutzmann (ed.), Teaching
and learning English as a global language. Tubingen: Stauffenburg. 73–89.
House, J. 2002. Developing pragmatic competence in English as a Lingua Franca. In Knapp
& Meierkord (eds.), Lingua Franca Communication. Peter Lang: Frankfurt Am Main.
245–268.
House, J. (ed.) 2009. Intercultural Pragmatics 6.2. Special issue: The pragmatics of English
as a Lingua Franca.
Hüllen, W. 1982. Teaching a foreign language as 'lingua franca'. Grazer Linguistische
Studien 16, 83–88.
Ingram, D & Bayliss, A. 2007, IELTS as a predictor of academic language performance, Part
1. IELTS Research Reports Volume 7, IELTS Australia Pty and British Council:
Canberra. 137–199
Jenkins, J. 1996a. Changing pronunciation priorities for successful communication in
international contexts. Speak Out! Newsletter of the IATEFL Pronunciation Special
Interest Group 17, 15–22.
Jenkins, J. 1996b. Native speaker, non-native speaker and English as a Foreign Language:
Time for a change. IATEFL Newsletter 131, 10–11.
70
Jenkins, J. 1998. Which pronunciation norms and models for English as an International
Language? ELT Journal 52.2, 119–126.
Jenkins, J. 2000. The Phonology of English as an International Language. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Jenkins, J. 2002. A sociolinguistically based, empirically researched pronunciation syllabus
for English as an International Language. Applied Linguistics 23.1, 83–103.
Jenkins, J. 2006. 'Current Perspectives on Teaching World Englishes and English as a Lingua
Franca'. TESOL Quarterly 40, 157-181.
Jenkins, J. 2006a. Points of view and blind spots: ELF and SLA. International Journal of
Applied Linguistics 16.2, 137–162.
Jenkins, J. 2006b. Current perspectives on teaching world Englishes and English as a lingua
franca. TESOL Quarterly 40, 157–181.
Jenkins, J. 2006c. The spread of English as an International Language: A testing time for
testers. ELT Journal 60.1, 42–50.
Jenkins, J. 2006d. Global intelligibility and local diversity: Possibility or paradox? In Rubdy
& Saraceni (eds.), 32–39.
Jenkins, J. 2007. English as a lingua franca: Attitude and identity. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Jenkins, J. 2009. World Englishes. A resource book for students. New York: Routledge.
Jenkins, J. 2011. Accommodating (to) ELF in the international university. Journal of
Pragmatics 43.4, 926–936.
Jenkins, J., Cogo, A. & Dewey, M. 2011. 'Review of developments in research into English
as a lingua franca'. Language Teaching 44/3, 281-315.
Jenkins, J., Fang, F., & Hu, L. 2017. Overseas Chinese students' perceptions of the influence
of English on their language and culture. Journal of Asia TEFL.
Kachru, B. B. 1985. Standards, codification and sociolinguistic realism: The English
language in the outer circle. In R. Quirk & H. G. Widdowson (eds.), English in the
world: Teaching and learning the language and literatures. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 11–30.
Kachru, B. B. 1992. 'Teaching World Englishesʼ. In B.B. Kachru (ed.), The Other Tongue:
English across Cultures (2nd edn.). Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
Kachru, B. B. 1996. 'World Englishes: Agony and Ecstasy'. Journal of Aesthetic Education
30, 135-155.
Kalocsai, K. 2009. Erasmus exchange students: A behind-the-scenes view into an ELF
community of practice. Apples – Journal of Applied Language Studies 3.1, 25–49.
Kalocsai, K. 2013. Communities of Practice and English as a Lingua Franca: A Study of
Students in a Central European Context. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Kankaanranta, A. 2006. "'Hej Seppo, Could You Pls Comment on This!'--Internal Email
Communication in Lingua Franca English in a Multinational Company." Business
Communication Quarterly 69 (2). 216–225.
Kankaanranta, Anne, and Leena Louhiala-Salminen. 2007. "Business Communication in
BELF." Business Communication Quarterly 70 (1). 55–59.
Kankaanranta, A. & L. Louhiala-Salminen 2010. 'English? – Oh, it's just work!': A study of
BELF users' perceptions. English for Specific Purposes 29. 204–209.
71
Kirkpatrick, A. 2007. World Englishes: Implications for international communication and
English language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kirkpatrick, A. (ed.) 2010a. The Routledge Handbook of World Englishes. London:
Routledge.
Kirkpatrick, A. 2010b. Researching English as a lingua franca in Asia: The Asian Corpus of
English (ACE) project. Asian Englishes 31.1, 4–18.
Kirkpatrick, A. 2010c. English as a lingua franca in ASEAN: A Multilingual model. Hong
Kong: Hong Kong University Press.
Knapp, K. 1987. English as an international lingua franca and the teaching of intercultural
competence. In W. Lo rsche & R. Schulze (eds.), Perspectives on language in
performance. Tübingen: Narr, 1022–1039.
Knapp, K. 2002. The fading out of the non-native speaker. Native speaker dominance in
lingua- franca-situations. In Knapp & Meierkord (eds.) Lingua franca
communication. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. 217–244
Kramsch, Claire J. 1993. Context and Culture in Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Leung, C., Lewkowicz, J., & Jenkins, J. 2016. English for Academic Purposes: a need for
remodelling. Englishes in Practice, 3(3). 55-73.
Kuppens, A. H. 2013. Cultural Globalization and the Global Spread of English: From
ʽSeparate Fields, Similar Paradigms' to a Transdisciplinary Approach. Globalizations
10.2, 327-342.
Mauranen, A. 2003. The corpus of English as a lingua franca in academic settings. TESOL
Quarterly 37.3, 513–527.
Mauranen, A. 2005. English as a lingua franca – an unknown language? In G. Cortese & A.
Duszak (eds.), Identity, community and discourse: English in intercultural settings.
Frankfurt: Peter Lang. 269–293.
Mauranen, Anna. 2006a. "A Rich Domain of ELF-the ELFA Corpus of Academic
Discourse." Nordic Journal of English Studies 5.2. 145–59.
Mauranen, A. 2006b. 'Signalling and preventing misunderstanding in ELF communication.
International Journal of the Sociology of Language'. International Journal of the
Sociology of Language 177, 123-150.
Mauranen, A. 2009. Chunking in ELF: Expressions for managing interaction. Journal of
Intercultural Pragmatics, 6.2, 217–233.
Mauranen, A. 2010. Discourse reflexivity – a discourse universal? The case of ELF. Nordic
Journal of English Studies 9.2, 13–40.
Mauranen, A. 2011. Exploring ELF in academia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mauranen, A. 2012. Exploring ELF: academic English shaped by non-native speakers.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mauranen A. & E. Ranta (eds.) 2009. English as a lingua franca. Studies and findings.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Meierkord, C. 2000. Interpreting lingua franca interaction: An analysis of
nonnative/nonnative small talk conversations in English. Linguistik online 5.
Meierkord, C. 2002. 'Language stripped bare' or 'linguistic masala'? Culture in lingua franca
conversation. In Knapp & Meierkord (eds.) Lingua franca communication. Frankfurt
am Main: Peter Lang. 109–133.
72
Meierkord, C. 2004. Syntactic Variation in Interactions across International Englishes.
English World-Wide, 25, 109–132.
Mufwene, S. 2001. The ecology of language evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
Nekvapil, J. & Sherman, T. 2013. Language ideologies and linguistic practices: The case of
multinational companies in Central Europe. In E. Barát, P. Studer & J. Nekvapil (eds),
Ideological Conceptualizations of Language: Discourses of Linguistic Diversity.
Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 85-117.
Nekvapil, J. & Sherman, T. 2018. Managing superdiversity in multinational companies. In
Creese, Angela & Blackledge, Adrian (eds). The Routledge Handbook of Language
and Superdiversity. Routledge.
Pitzl, M-L. 2005. Non-understanding in English as a lingua franca: Examples from a business
context. 2005. Vienna English Working Papers 14.2, 50–71.
Pitzl, M-L. 2009. 'We should not wake up any dogs': Idiom and metaphor in ELF. In
Mauranen & Ranta (eds.), English as a lingua franca. Studies and findings. Newcastle
upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 298– 322.
Pitzl, M-L., A. Breiteneder & T. Klimpfinger (2008). A world of words: Processes of lexical
innovation in VOICE. Vienna English Working Papers 17.2, 21–46.
Pölzl, U. & Seidlhofer, B. 2006. In and on their own terms: the "habitat factor" in English as
a lingua franca interaction. International Journal of the Sociology of Language 177,
151–176.
Pullin Stark, P. 2009. No joke – this is serious!' Power, solidarity and humour in business
English as a Lingua Franca (BELF). In Mauranen & Ranta (eds.), English as a lingua
franca. Studies and findings. Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
152–177.
Pullin Stark, P. 2010. Small talk, rapport, and international communicative competence.
Lessons to learn from BELF. Journal of Business Communication 47.4, 455–476.
Quinn Novotná, V. 2012. World Englishes and English as a Lingua Franca: a reflection of
global paradigmatic changes in the Czech Republic. Disertační práce, Praha,
Univerzita Karlova v Praze, Filozofická fakulta, Ústav anglického jazyka a didaktiky.
Quinn Novotná, V. 2014. 'On the potential transformation of English textbooks – a global
perspective, part IIʼ. Lingua Viva 10.18, 9-19.
Quinn Novotná, V. & Dunková, J. 2015. 'Teaching through ELF at International Post-
secondary Institutions: A Case Study at United World Collegesʼ. In H. Bowles & A.
Cogo (eds.), International Perspectives on English as a Lingua Franca. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan
Seidlhofer, B. 2001. 'Closing a conceptual gap: the case for a description of English as a
lingua francaʼ. International Journal of Applied Linguistics 2, 133-158.
Seidlhofer, B. 2004. 'Research Perspectives on teaching English as a lingua franca'. Annual
Review of Applied Linguistics 24, 209-39.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2007. "English as a Lingua Franca and communities of practice". In
Volk-Birke, Sabine; Lippert, Julia (eds.). Anglistentag 2006 Halle: proceedings.
Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 307-318.
73
Seidlhofer, B. 2009. 'Common ground and different realities: world Englishes and English as
a lingua franca.ʼ World Englishes 28.2, 236-45.
Seidlhofer, Barbara. 2011. Understanding English as a Lingua Franca. Oxford: Oxford UP.
Seidlhofer B., Breiteneder A. and Pitzl M. 2006. "English as a lingua franca in Europe".
Annual Review of Applied Linguistics 26, 1-34.
Selinker, L. 1972. Interlanguage. International Review of Applied Linguistics 10, 3–34.
Sifakis, S. & Sougari, A. 2005. Pronunciation issues and EIL pedagogy in the periphery: A
survey of Greek state school teachers' beliefs. TESOL Quarterly, 39, 467–488.
Simons, G.F. and Fennig, C.D. (eds.). 2017. “Ethnologue: Languages of the World,
Twentieth edition”. Dallas, Texas: SIL International. Online version:
http://www.ethnologue.com/language/eng.
Trudgill, P. 2002. Sociolinguistic variation and change. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University
Press.
Trudgill, P. & Hannah, J. 2009. International English (5th edn). London: Hodder Education.
UNCTADstat. 2017. http://unctadstat.unctad.org/wds.
VOICE. 2013. The Vienna-Oxford International Corpus of English (version 2.0 online).
Director: B. Seidlhofer; Researchers: A. Breiteneder, T. Klimpfinger, S. Majewski, R.
Osimk-Teasdale, ML Pitzl, M. Radeka. http://voice.univie.ac.at.
Walker, R. 2010. Teaching the pronunciation of English as a lingua franca. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Wang, Y., & Jenkins, J. 2016. "Nativeness" and intelligibility: impacts of intercultural
experience through English as a lingua franca on Chinese speakers' language
attitudes. Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics, 39(1), 38-58.
Widdowson, H.G. 1994. The Ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly: Teachers of English
to Speakers of Other Languages. (TESOL) 28/2. ikd377-89.
Widdowson, H. G. 2004. A perspective on recent trends. In A. P. R. Howatt with
Widdowson, H. A History of English Language Teaching. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 353–372.
74
7 Resumé
Diplomová práce se zabývá vnímáním a zkušenostmi uživatelů ELF a profesionálů v
oblasti ELT a porovnává je se současným výzkumem angličtiny jako lingua franca (ELF).
Studie v úvodu představuje koncept ELF a stručně nastiňuje témata, která jsou předmětem
práce. V oddílu 2.1 následuje popis vzestupu a rozšíření angličtiny jako kontaktního jazyka a
následné globalizace angličtiny, která vedla k její současné roli jako lingua franca moderního
světa.
Výzkum v oblasti ELF je silně ovlivněn různými obory lingvistiky, mezi které patří i
výuka anglického jazyka (ELT). Oddíl 2.2 se proto pokouší vymezit základní terminologii
objevující se v diskuzích o ELFu, která bude užívána v této práci, a definuje samotný ELF
jako "funkční varietu" (Dunková 2014: 16) angličtiny používanou v kontaktních situacích
mluvčími různých prvních jazyků (L1).
Oddíl 2.3 seznamuje se začátky výzkumu ELFu v polovině 90. let prostřednictvím
klíčových témat, jimž se výzkumníci ELFu věnovali. Počátkem byly teoretické diskuze o
povaze angličtiny jako mezinárodního jazyka (EIL) ve srovnání s interakcemi nativních
řečníků (NS) (2.3), a také základy korpusového výzkumu ELF v Evropě a Asii, který
následně usnadnil analýzu těchto jedinečných interakcí v angličtině (2.3.1), např.
prostřednictvím korpusů VOICE (2013), ELFA (2008) a ACE (2014).
Tématem oddílu 2.3.2 je diskuze o sociolingvistické identitě uživatelů ELF a jejich
užívání této transkulturní funkční jazykové variety "vně [jejich] primárních společenských
prostorů a řečových komunit" (Seidlhofer 2011: 84), což vyžaduje, aby uživatelé ELFu
zapojovali svá osobní zázemí, jak kulturní tak jazyková, spíše než abychom u nich
předpokládali kulturu rodilých mluvčích (NS) angličtiny.
Oddíl 2.3.3 dále rozvíjí toto rozlišení popisem současného chápání ELFu, vzhledem k
němuž jsou prováděny analýzy fonologických, lexikogramatických a pragmatických rysů
ELFu, čímž připravuje čtenáře k pochopení kontroverzní diskuze nad definicí ELFu jako
ohraničené variety angličtiny. Autorka zastává názor, že pro popis ELFu potřebujeme popis a
vymezení na škále, která překračuje rámec stávající terminologie, a rezonuje s názorem
75
Jenkins, Cogo a Dewey (2011: 297) v tom smyslu, že nastal čas "přehodnotit pojmy jazykové
variety a řečové komunity" ve světle proměnlivé povahy ELFu užívané mluvčími L1 a L2 v
stále více se rozvíjejícím mezinárodním tzv. rozšiřujícím se kruhu (Kachru 1985).
Obtížnost zařadit ELF a interakce v něm probíhající úhledně do předem definovaných
kategorií přináší potíže odborníkům zabývajícím se ELT zejména v tom, že posuzování
uživatelů ELFu podle norem NS nemusí být ve většině kontextů vhodné. Zdá se, že výzkum
až do dnešního dne signalizuje potřebu, aby profesionálové v oblasti ELT vyučovali funkční
variety angličtiny přizpůsobené potřebám a očekáváním uživatelů jazyka, při vědomí
některých zásad ELFu, jako jsou ty, které jsou popsány v oddílu 2.4. "Vysoký stupeň
interaktivní a pragmatické kompetence" (Jenkins et al., 2011: 293) zajišťuje uživatelům ELFu
úspěšnost jejich komunikačních interakcí a umožňuje používat ELF pro zvládnutí
komunikace v různých oblastech.
Dvě takové oblasti jsou tématy oddílů 2.5.1 a 2.5.2, konkrétně využití ELFu v
obchodním a akademickém světě. Obě zde zmíněné oblasti byly výrazně ovlivněny
globalizací a vyžadují, aby se uživatelé ELFu v těchto nadnárodních nebo mezinárodních
podmínkách rychle přizpůsobili takovému užívání anglického jazyka. Problémy a výzvy, s
nimiž se setkávají uživatelé ELFu v těchto oblastech, signalizují potřebu praktičtějšího
přístupu k ELT přímo ve výuce.
Oddíl 2.6 je věnován diskusi o přístupu k ELT informujícím o ELF, konkrétněji o
tom, jak takové principy zapojit do výuky. Podle názoru autorky výzkum ELFu zdůrazňuje
situační specifičnost interakcí v lingua franca. Výuka angličtiny v rozšiřujícím se kruhu tedy
musí brát v úvahu potřeby uživatelů v konkrétních komunitách, jakož i v jiných zvláštních
kontextech užívání jazyka. Lze tvrdit, že v rámci vnitřního i vnějšího kruhu je vhodné
jazykové vzdělávání zaměřené na ty rysy, které se vztahují k místní varietě. Výzkum v oblasti
ELFu má proto dalekosáhlé důsledky pro charakter výuky anglického jazyka v rozšiřujícím
se kruhu, kde znalost studentů je prověřována především v interakci s jinými nerodilými
mluvčími.
Někteří, např. Canagarajah (2005), navrhují "méně hierarchický a vyrovnanější
přístup" k výuce jazyků ve třídě, pro který se "výukové modely, materiály a metody mohou
připravit na místní úrovni" (Jenkins et al 2011: 306). Další metodou začlenění perspektivy
76
ELFu do hodin angličtiny, o nichž se diskutuje v této části, je tříproudý přístup Kirkpatrickův
(2007), který se zaměřuje na rozvíjení jazykového povědomí, mezikulturního povědomí a
pragmatických strategií umožňujících vyrovnat se současným množstvím variet angličtiny
(Jenkins 2006 : 173, Kirkpatrick 2007).
Je zjevné, že samotný výzkum nemůže změnit způsob výuky angličtiny v kontextu
lingua franca v rozšiřujícím se kruhu. Autorka tedy navrhuje vědomé začleňování zásad
ELFu odborníky v oblasti ELT přímo v terénu, což vyžaduje individuální přizpůsobení
specifickým potřebám a zájmům uživatelů ELFu. To však není možné, pokud normy podle
NS budou i nadále udržovány i v kontextech, kde studentům pomáhají jen málo.
Aby bylo možné zjistit, zda a jak se komunitě ELT podařilo propojit výukové
strategie, metody, postupy a cíle se specifickými potřebami a očekáváními studentů, byl
proveden sociolingvistický výzkum ve formě částečně strukturovaných rozhovorů s mluvčími
anglického jazyka L2, kteří používají ELF v každodenním životě, v práci a při studiu, a s
profesionály v oblasti ELT s cílem zjistit, jak se témata, která se v těchto rozhovorech
objevují, vztahují k teoretickému výzkumu ELF představenému v Kapitole 2.
Pro tento projekt byla vybrána kvalitativní, sociolingvistická metodologie jako reakce
na povahu výzkumu ELF v posledních desetiletích, který se zaměřoval především na
formální lingvistické a pragmatické rysy ELF. Autorku této práce, která je rovněž
profesionálem v oblasti ELT, zajímalo, jak uživatelé ELF využívají své jazykové a
pragmatické kompetence a jak by sami popsali ony typické kontexty použití, na které klade
důraz odborná literatura (3.1).
Za tímto účelem provedla autorka individuální, kvalitativní, částečně strukturované
rozhovory s různorodou skupinou pěti uživatelů ELF a dvou ELT odborníků (3.1.1).
Kvalitativní metody, používané ve společenských vědách, jsou užitečné při získávání
informací k výzkumným otázkám, které vyžadují interaktivní, reflexivní přístup. Na druhé
straně vyžadují tyto metody "otevřenost" (Flick 2004: 154) na straně výzkumníka, který se
musí reagovat výběrem respondentů nebo přizpůsobovat plán studie aktuálním poznatkům
nebo problémům, které se vyskytly během výzkumu (3.1.1).
77
Jak již bylo zmíněno, jednalo se o polostrukturované rozhovory s využitím návodu na
vedení rozhovoru, který vytyčoval klíčová témata tak, aby pokryl výzkumné otázky (3.2.1) a
zároveň byl navržen tak, aby podpořil přirozené plynutí rozhovoru (3.2.2; 3.4.1). Účastníci
této studie byli požádáni, aby podepsali formuláře informovaného souhlasu (3.2.3).
Jednotliví uživatelé ELF a profesionálové v oblasti ELT, kteří byli nakonec vybráni
pro tuto studii, byli vybráni ze souboru potenciálních účastníků shromážděných
prostřednictvím osobních kontaktů autorky v jazykových komunitách ELF a ELT (3.3.1), na
základě počátečního průzkumů za účelem výběru uživatelů ELF nejvhodnějších pro účely
této studie (3.3.3). Rozhovory byly nahrány (3.4.2) a později analyzovány z hlediska
relevance pro výzkum (3.5.1), části rozhovorů by vybrány a ručně transkribovány tak, aby
byla zajištěna přesnost (3.5.2). Vzhledem k tomu, že přepisy byly použity k analýze založené
na obsahu a netýkají se formy, je systém přepisu převzat podle konvence užívané Bucholtzem
a DuBois z University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) (Bucholtz & DuBois 2017); v
tomto stylu přepisu jsou do transkriptu zahrnuty minimální fonetické informace (viz
konvence transkripce v Příloze B), zatímco rytmus výpovědí tazatele a dotazovaného je
zachován využitím přerušení řádků k signalizaci intonačních jednotek v řeči.
Kapitola čtyři této práce předkládá hloubkovou obsahovou analýzu rozhovorů s
uživateli ELFu a profesionály v oboru ELT. Autorka nejprve v části 4.1 stručně představuje
každého z pěti uživatelů ELFu, kteří v současnosti žijí v zemích rozšiřujícího se kruhu,
představuje jejich jazykové a kulturní zázemí, aktuální prostředí a roli angličtiny v jejich
každodenním životě, jakož i důvody jejich výběru pro tuto studii. Analýza rozhovorů s
uživateli ELF se pak soustředí na rozdíly (4.2.1) a podobnosti (4.2.2) mezi nimi. Jak rozdíly,
tak podobnosti, jimiž se analýza zabývá, byly vybrány na základě skutečnosti, že tyto body
byly buď zmíněny nebo zaznamenány v každé jednotlivé interakci mezi autorkou a
respondenty a tudíž tvoří základ pro srovnání mezi zkušenostmi těchto různorodých uživatelů
ELFu.
Tři rozdíly mezi uživateli ELF, jimiž se tato studie věnuje, jsou (1) motivace k
přestěhování do cizí země, (2) osobní zázemí a (3) úroveň angličtiny. Zatímco první dva
rozdíly jsou výsledkem témat, která vyvstala v průběhu rozhovorů, poslední, třetí, rozdíl je
podrobně popsán v části 4.2.1.3 a je založen na praxi autorky v hodnocení pokročilosti v
oblasti ELT.
78
Podobnosti mezi uživateli ELFu v této studii jsou rozděleny do dvou hlavních
kategorií. Za prvé, autorka popisuje obecné podobné zkušeností těchto uživatelů ELFu na
základě jejich komentářů během rozhovorů, zejména následující fakta: fakt, že všichni
účastníci této studie dosáhli úrovně znalosti angličtiny, která jim umožňuje úspěšně působit v
kontextech, ve kterých se nacházejí, fakt, že tato úroveň jim zajišťuje relativně hladké
fungování, fakt, že oceňují důležitost porozumění ostatním vyplývajícím z jejich úspěšného
působení v zahraničí, a fakt, že se ve výsledku snaží zapojit se do místní kultury ve městech,
kde žijí, a touží ve větší míře porozumět lidem, se kterými přicházejí do kontaktu.
Kromě těchto obecných podobností uživatelé ELFu v této studii také souhlasí se čtyřmi
body, které se v každém z rozhovorů spontánně objevily. Ty jsou podrobně popsány v části
4.2.2.1, ale lze je shrnout takto:
1. Angličtina je nezbytným nástrojem pro uživatele ELFu v řadě oblastí v současném
internacionalizovaném světě.
2. Existují generační rozdíly ve schopnostech užívat angličtinu v domácích i zahraničních kontextech
zkoumaných uživatelů ELFu.
3. Uživatelé ELFu si musí být neustále vědomi jazykových dovedností ostatních uživatelů ELFu, s nimiž
vstupují do interakcí, a musí využívat strategie přizpůsobení a být schopni přizpůsobit svůj jazyk ve
prospěch těchto dalších komunikujícíh osob.
4. Nedostatek jazykových dovedností a zastaralé metody výuky jazyků jsou největší překážkou pro
úspěšné osvojování jazyků za účelem komunikace v rozšiřujícím se kruhu.
Podobně jako v předchozí sekci začíná autorka analýzu rozhovorů s odborníky v
oblasti ELT krátkým představením obou účastníků, načrtnutím jejich předchozích zkušeností
s ELT a oblastí zájmu a specializace, stejně tak jako důvodů jejich zařazení do výzkumu.
Nicméně, na rozdíl od analýzy rozhovorů s uživateli ELF, se analýza těchto rozhovorů
zaměřuje na jejich sdílené zájmy a cíle navzdory jejich různým úhlům pohledu. Tyto dva cíle
byly opět identifikovány jako témata, která se objevila v obou rozhovorech a která
respondenti hodnotili jako důležité aspekty svého pedagogického působení v mezinárodním
kontextu. Cíle, které sdílejí tito dva odborníci, jsou: (1) přizpůsobení se potřebám studentův
konkrétních kontextech ELT a (2) poskytování lepšího jazykového vzdělávání těmto
studentům.
79
Potřeby student je třeba nejprve identifikovat a poté nalézt způsob, jak je začlenit do
činností a úkolů ve třídě. Druhý cíl, tj. poskytnout kvalitní jazykové vzdělávání, je úkolem
zvláště důležitým pro Raye, bývalého administrátora a majitele online jazykové školy, a
Klaru, která pracuje jako metodička. Oba dotazovaní mohou ve svém bezprostředním okolí
zavádět změny a oba souhlasí s tím, že v současné komunitě ELT existuje určitá míra tíhnutí
k varietám rodilých mluvčí, což má negativní dopad na kritéria, podle kterých jazykové školy
a jazykové programy vybírají a najímají nové zaměstnance. Změny v postupech při náboru
vyučujících by podle nich měly pozitivní dopad na komunitu ELT jako celek a vedly by ve
svém důsledku k náboru kvalifikovaných profesionálů ELT, kteří odpovídají jejich shodnému
popisu toho, co dělá učitele dobrým učitelem (viz konec oddílu 4.4.2.)
V páté kapitole jsou výsledky analýz kvalitativních rozhovorů s uživateli ELFu a
odborníky z oblasti ELT vztaženy k tématům představeným v teoretickém přehledu.
Potvrzuje se názor, že ELF je "funkční varieta" angličtiny užívaná mluvčími angličtiny jako
L1 a L2 v kontaktních situacích, stejně jako využívání pragmatických strategií uživateli ELFu
ve všech oblastech, zejména akademických a obchodních. Popisuje se také různá úroveň
znalostí sledovaných uživatelů ELF spolu s příklady jejich užívání nestandardních
fonetických, lexikálních a gramatických forem, které nicméně nepředstavují pro autorku
žádné problémy při pochopení jejich celkového sdělení.
Diskuze se dále zaměřuje na názor, že navzdory svému prokázatelně úspěšnému
působení v interakcích ELFu v oblastech rozšiřujícího se kruhu, tři z našich pěti uživatelů
ELF v této studii vyjadřují nespokojenost s úrovní výuky angličtině, kterou prošli ve svých
domovských zemích, což naznačuje potřebu revidovat postupy při výuce v tomto kontextu.
Praktičtější přístup k ELT, který zahrnuje informace o ELF, se proto nabízí jako prostředek
ke zlepšení kvality vzdělávání v angličtině pro komunikaci v rozšiřujícím se kruhu, a to jak
na úrovni školení učitelů, tak v samotné praxi ve třídě. Přehodnocení běžných postupů náboru
učitelů, kdy přednost dostávají nekvalifikovaní rodilí mluvčí nad kvalifikovanými nerodilými
učitely (NNEST), se tak jeví jako posun směrem k praktičtějšímu přístupu k výuce angličtiny
v mezinárodních kontextech.
Pátou kapitolu ukončuje diskuze o směrech dalšího možného výzkumu, který by mohl
dle autorky posloužit lepší informovanosti při výzkumu v oblasti ELF, neboť předložená
studie má pouze omezený rozsah. Závěr v kapitole 6 shrnuje hlavní body práce a předkládá
nejdůležitější body argumentace.
80
Appendix A: Interview Materials
81
A.1 Interview Guide: ELF Users (Initial)
Interview Questions for ELF Users in Europe and Asia
1. I’ve told you that I’ll be asking you questions about your experience using English.
a. Is there anything you’d like to say before we start?
b. What does “English” mean to you?
2. Where are you from?
3. Have you ever lived in another city in your country?
a. What did you do there (work/school)?
b. Is the same type of (language) spoken there?
c. What kinds of differences are there between (native language) and (other dialect)?
4. Do you like to travel?
a. Where have you been?
5. Have you ever lived in another country?
a. What did you do there?
b. Why did you move there?
c. Were you able to use your native language with anyone while you lived there?
d. What language did you use to communicate with people?
i. How many of the people you spoke to in English regularly were native/non-native
speakers?
ii. Where were they from?
6. Tell me about your previous experience with English.
a. Where/When did you study English?
i. Were your teachers native or non-native speakers?
1. Did you feel any difference related to this?
b. Did you enjoy your classes?
i. How important were they to you?
c. Is there anything you feel you weren’t taught that would have been useful?
d. How has your knowledge of English changed over time?
7. Is there anything related to English instruction that would benefit people like you that teachers don’t
usually do?
8. Did (your company/school) require that you use English?
9. Have you ever found yourself in a situation you felt you weren’t prepared for?
a. What did you do about it?
10. Have you ever felt like you weren’t able to communicate the way you wanted to?
a. In your travels, have you had any funny/interesting moments of “mistranslation”?
b. What did you do about it? Did you find a way to adjust your English?
11. Have you been in a situation where the other person didn’t understand you?
a. What would you do differently if you had to do it again?
i. In terms of preparation and/or “in the moment?
12. Are there situations where you have to use English, but would prefer to use other languages?
a. (Can you give me an example?)
13. How has English affected your social life?
a. Have you studied (the local language)?
i. Do/did you feel comfortable using it?
b. Are you able to talk to everyone you want to?
i. What if a person’s English level is not very high?
c. Do you feel like you are able to maintain friendships with locals?
i. How do you communicate with them?
ii. Is there anything you felt that you missed out on because of your inability to
communicate with the locals?
14. Can you tell me a little about any cultural differences you have noticed between you and the locals in
_______?
a. Are there any particular aspects of interaction, for example, that are specific to the (the local)
culture?
b. How would you describe (the locals)?
i. Is this very different from what you were used to before living there?
c. Could you describe (the locals) in three words?
15. How has knowledge of English affected your experiences abroad?
16. Is there anything I didn’t ask that you would like to add?
82
A.2 Interview Guide: ELT Professionals (Initial)
Interview Questions for ELT Professionals
1. I’ve told you that I’ll be asking you questions about your experience as a teaching/language professional in the
English-speaking community. Is there anything you’d like to say before we start?
2. What does “English” mean to you? What do you think of when you think of an English speaker?
3. Where are you from? What is your native language?
a. Have you lived anywhere else?
4. How long have you been teaching English?
a. Where have you taught?
i. Have you noticed any differences in the variety of English taught in different
locations/regions/schools?
b. what variety or category of English do you primarily focus on? (e.g. BrE, AmE, other? ELF??)
i. Why do you focus on this variety? (e.g. it’s natural, out of necessity, another reason?)
c. What are your strengths as an English teacher? What are you best at?
i. Do you teach individuals or groups? Which do you prefer (and why)?
d. In which specific area of EN do your students typically excel?
i. Do they already have strengths/weaknesses when they come to you?
1. How does this affect your planning of their course?
5. Where do you currently work?
a. If it is not your current job, have you ever worked for/been associated with a language school?
b. What languages does (your school/company) offer?
c. In the English department, are there any specialty programs, like business EN, test preparation, academic
EN, etc?
i. Are any types of classes more popular than others?
d. What is the average number of students/class?
6. Where do your students come from?
a. Are they local? International students? What percentage would you say you have of each?
7. Who is in charge of placing students in certain classes/placing teachers in certain companies?
a. How is a student’s level evaluated when they first come to (school/company)?
i. Is this usually accurate? Who decides if the student needs to be moved? (specific examples?)
b. How are the teachers for these classes selected? (student evals? experience? background?)
c. What information is given to teachers at the beginning of a course?
8. How do students usually describe what they want out of lessons?
a. How well do students seem to understand their own personal goals?
i. specific examples?
b. How well do students seem to understand their own personal needs?
i. specific examples?
c. What types of issues do students at (school/company) typically face?
9. In terms of lessons taught at (school/company), who decides the variety of English that is taught?
10. Who develops the syllabus for the course/ individual lessons?
a. How much freedom do teachers have when planning their lessons?
b. What materials/support are available to teachers?
i. Do you usually use textbooks? Which ones?
ii. If you develop your own material, where do you look for resources?
iii. What kinds of materials do you usually use in class?
c. Who develops the syllabus for courses?
i. Do teachers need to submit lesson plans/course plans to (school/company) ahead of time? How
are these monitored?
11. What makes a course at (school/company) “successful”?
a. What kind of remarks do students usually make about their own progress?
b. Do your students ever have any specific issues they’d like to address (e.g. email format, telephone
convos, etc)
12. Where do teachers at your (school/company) typically come from?
a. Are they local? (i.e., do they live in (city) long-term, or are they usually transient?)
b. What percentage of your teachers would you say are native speakers?
13. What qualities would you say make a good teacher?
14. Can you think of any typical complaints students have about teachers/lessons?
15. Have you ever studied another language? (/your first language is (language), so you must have studied English…?)
a. Where?
b. How long did you study?
c. Did you like going to class?
i. Can you think of a good teacher you have had? How would you describe him/her?
ii. What about a bad teacher you have had? What made him/her a bad teacher?
16. Is there anything I didn’t ask that you would like to add?
83
A.3 Informed Consent Form (Blank)
INFORMED CONSENT FORM
This form details the purpose of this study, a description of the involvement required and your rights as a participant.
Thanks in advance for your participation in this study.
The purpose of this study is:
to gain insight into the experiences of non-native English speakers living abroad and using English to communicate in a variety
of contexts
The benefits of the research will be:
A better understanding of the specific issues and/or challenges facing ELF users in Europe and Asia
A better understanding of how English teachers in Europe and Asia can help to alleviate some of these challenges for students
utilizing English for purposes of tourism, education, and/or business
The methods that will be used to meet this purpose include:
One-on-one interviews, conducted either in person, over the phone, or through Skype
Possible follow-up emails to clarify information collected during the interviews
Our discussion will be audio and video recorded to help me accurately capture your insights in your own words. The recorded files will
only be seen by me and my advisor for the purpose of this study, but may be used in future research in either a video or audio
format, or as transcribed text as indicated below. If you feel uncomfortable with the recorder, you may ask that it be turned off at
any time.
You also have the right to withdraw from the study at any time. In the event you choose to withdraw from the study, all information you
provide will be omitted from the final paper and subsequent research projects.
Insights gathered by you and other participants will be used in writing a qualitative research thesis, which will be read by my advisor(s), and
presented to Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. In addition, these insights may be used in future research projects, as
indicated below.
(Please click all that apply)
The data resulting from this interview can be used:
as collected data for a qualitative research thesis project as described above
as collected data for any future research conducted by the researcher (Stefanie Morejón)
as transcribed text for future use in any relevant public corpora
as audio data for future use in any relevant public corpora
as audio and video data for future use in any relevant public corpora
Though direct quotes from you may be used in the situations listed above, your name and other identifying information will be kept
anonymous.
You are encouraged to ask questions or raise concerns at any time about the nature of the study or the methods I am using. Please feel free
to contact me at anytime by e-mail at stefanie.morejon@gmail.com.
By signing this consent form, I certify that I, _____________ , agree to the terms of this agreement.
_________________
(Digital Signature)
on _____________
(Today’s Date)
84
A.4 Informed Consent Forms (Signed)
AVAILABLE BY REQUEST
85
Appendix B: Transcription Conventions
TRANSCRIPTION SYMBOL
MEANING
AB:
CD:
Speaker Identification
[ah], [eh], [ehm], [mm], [um], [uh]
Fillers: General
[mhm], [unh]
Fillers: Signal Affirmation
[oh]
Filler: Signal Surprise
@, @@, @@@, @@@@
Laugh, Laughter
encens
Foreign Word
[???]
Unintelligible/Unknown Word
[???]
Unintelligible/Unknown Word in a Foreign Language
(context)
Contextual information for the reader, if needed
word, word
Comma used to avoid confusion (e.g. in lists)
bold
Indicates added stress
86
Appendix C:
Transcriptions of Selected Excerpts from Interviews with ELF Users
87
Appendix C.1: Titouan Poulin (Interview Transcript – Partial)
Duration of Interview: <00.43.05>
C.1.1
SM: before I begin is there anything you'd like to say?
when I tell you I'm writing about English
what do you think of?
TP: [ah] well
I totally understand
so many people speak English
without being an English native a native speaker
it's a big topic really a lot to say
I apologize for my strong French accent
SM: @@ that's okay
C.1.2
SM: so I can [ah] assume you are French then?
TP: @@@ yes obviously I am French
SM: where are you from in France?
TP: from Lyons in the southeast
SM: and where do you live now?
TP: I'm living in Hanoi in Vietnam
SM: before you moved to Hanoi did you live anywhere else?
TP: [ehm] in France
and before that
I stayed for 10 months in Australia
SM: in Australia?
so definitely in Australia you used English
TP: @@ definitely
C.1.3
SM: did you study English in France?
TP: well yeah
in school
it was not like
I learned more in Australia in one year than I learned in six or seven years at school
SM: yeah
this is very common
I think having experience in the place is very important
did you live anywhere other than Lyons in France?
TP: no
only in Lyons
C.1.4
SM: have you also traveled?
TP: oh
yeah
Polynesia Italy Ireland Spain Thailand
that's it I think
SM: and [uh]
what would you say is the biggest difference between places?
not necessarily about the language
but about people
TP: Vietnam
Vietnam is a big different place
with the culture a big big difference
Australia or Europe is not that big difference
SM: right
can you describe
88
how is Vietnam different?
TP: so much more busy in the streets
like every area outside from
like [uh] from in the streets
they always have outside the shops some coffee [ah]
just going from one point to another
it is easy to speak to neighbor to have a just have a tea
all is occupied by people who take the time to stay and be in the same space with each other
SM: so life really happens outside?
if I had to describe
you know I grew up in the United States
we spent a lot of time in our houses
TP: also in France
SM: so Vietnam is more
outside [uh]
more vibrant?
would you say it's more social?
TP: I think so
all the people in the street
they don't know each other
but they find it easy to talk about about nothing
SM: I think this doesn't happen very often in France
TP: @@@ no
not @@ anymore
SM: not anymore?
TP: like 50 years ago
maybe it was like that
from what I heard from my grandparents
but now
[gesturing blinders] we focus
we go to work or go to school
just go on your way
don't talk to the one near you in the subway or on the road
SM: right
everybody is in their own world
TP: yeah
headphones
music loud
SM: you're right absolutely
C.1.5
SM: how long have you been in Vietnam?
TP: I been more than ??? year now
SM: more than a year or more than four years?
TP: [gesturing showing 4 fingers] four years
SM: that's a long time
TP: ah it's okay
time goes fast
C.1.6
SM: are you studying Vietnamese?
TP: I learn it
not at school
I just learn it like with my colleague my friend
SM: just from experience?
TP: just from yeah
just from experience
small notebook
and what is that?
how do you say that?
89
and using it a lot a lot
SM: so you can handle
for example
ordering food in a restaurant?
or
TP: oh yeah
I can have conversation
I'm not firm
but I'm
average
SM: that's great
I've never tried to learn Vietnamese
but it seems difficult
TP: I would say if you're not being in Vietnam it's impossible
but here in Vietnam it's easy
much more easier
SM: sure
C.1.7
SM: have you studied any other languages?
TP: German for 9 years
but [uh] I didn't use it for 9 years @@ so I almost forget all
SM: and you studied French of course in school
grammar and writing
and all of this
TP: sure sure sure
C.1.8
SM: so Dani {mutual friend} introduced me to you
and she introduced me to some other people as well who all seem to be French
when you're in Vietnam
do you use French or English to communicate?
TP: well for example I live in a shared house
and we have one Canadian girl one English guy
one French boy and one French girl
so basically it's English at home
in the street
[baaa]
I use more English than French I think
SM: alright
and have you noticed any changes in your English?
TP: well I have to say
I think it's improving
[ah] a little bit
at the beginning I wasn't sure [uh]
because when you speak with Vietnamese like
no one know much of the English
you have to use a lower English
like simple words simple sentence
at some point two or three years ago I feel like I lose a little bit my English but
a lot of customers are native English speakers so
it's getting up again
C.1.9
SM: where do you work?
TP: I work in a restaurant
my job is a waiter
SM: ok
so you spend a lot of time talking to people
TP: yes
90
really a lot
SM: and most of the tourists are from where?
TP: a big part from Australia America
mostly western districts
so a lot of western people
C.1.10
SM: you said the Vietnamese level of English is a bit lower
or maybe just a bit different?
TP: you have some Vietnamese who speak English
like you can hear American accent very good
and you have like
in some cases they're not that good
because the accent is very different
like the d you say zed and the vowels
so the word "tomorrow" sounds like "tumazo"
it's easier for me to understand the English from French
the smallest people
like student still at school who have never lived [ah]
abroad
in general the Vietnamese don't speak English so good
but the younger people are a lot better
C.1.11
SM: why did you move to Vietnam?
TP: oh
it was an accident also
I just came to visit friends
like I was planning to go to work in Canada
my friend was here in Vietnam for working also
and I decide to [ah]
I had a lot of holiday
so on the way I said okay
I would go to Vietnam to see him
then to Madagascar to see some other friend
so I made it to Madagascar but then came back to Vietnam
SM: do you plan to stay there for a long?
TP: at least four years more I think
work is good
life is good
SM: I have heard
from friends who have been to Vietnam
that it is the kind of place that makes you want to stay
how would you describe your everyday normal life there?
TP: in school what I love is a lot of play a lot of [???]
in some place it's very busy
lots of motorbikes trucks
[???]
I don't feel the pollution much even though it is hot
a lot of party good food
lots of food
lots of food and drink
C.1.12
SM: aside from work
your social circle your friends
most of them are from where?
TP: [uf] [uf] [uf]
I would say French England Canada
some Australian also
91
SM: so when you are all together do you usually speak English?
or French?
TP: well
if someone in the group doesn't speak French
we @try@ to speak English
but when we are French altogether we have some conversation to the side in French
C.1.13
SM: when you meet a tourist
on the street for example
what is the language you usually speak to them?
if they ask where to go for example?
TP: always English
and sometime French because you can hear it quite quickly
SM: but most people will ask you in English?
TP: well
some French will start in French
even they don't know where you're from
for example [ah]
some people in French don't speak English at all so
SM: but
I think this is less common now
I think especially the younger generation
our age and those in school now
I think everybody is studying English
TP: yes well…
just the basics
we cannot stand to be conversation
but you can know the basic foods drinks ask directions
not speak politics but can ask for information
but the older generation
40 50 year old zero
C.1.14
SM: is this the same in Vietnam?
TP: yes well [ah]
in Vietnam
just after the war
I heard that it was forbidden to learn French or English for twenty years ago
they don't like because the revolution French no English no
this is not fact it is possible
but this is what I hear
I think it's true
SM: [mm] okay
TP: now they are very good English I think
the younger generation speak very good English
because they have a lot of native speaker come here to teach even in public school
even French
one of my staff she is student and she learn French just at school
and she is very good
for someone who has never been abroad…
even her English is quite fine
C.1.15
SM: do you ever have any moments where you misunderstand somebody
or there's some confusion in the conversation because of understanding
TP: oh [ah]
it happens sometimes yes
I don't have example to give you like that
[er] it happens sometime of course
92
SM: is this usually because of pronunciation?
or is it because of the meaning of words?
or
maybe you are speaking too fast?
or they are?
TP: well…
my staff always say that I speak too fast and they don't know all the words
and some word will be the same like
one mistake they make a lot is between chicken and kitchen
SM: @@@ what?
can you explain?
TP: @@ like
where is the [???] @@
oh it's in the chicken
SM: @@@ ok
that's pretty funny
TP: yeah
it's one of the common ones
SM: but when this happens
you always know that they mean kitchen
TP: oh yeah
already I know that the chicken is the kitchen
SM: is there anything else like that?
TP: [mmmm]
well…
like I told before the tumazo you have to understand
but now it's better because now we mostly speak together in Vietnamese with the staff
SM: when you speak Vietnamese
do you feel like they understand you?
TP: [eh]
people who they know me understand me
but people in the street is one and two
one will understand and one will not because the French accent is [ah]
well it's like that
SM: so there's some confusion but you usually find a way around it
TP: oh yes
because most of the Vietnamese people
when they see you they can see that you are a foreigner
and if you say something
even if you say it in Vietnamese
they already think [boh] I won't understand why I should even bother with the listening
no no no
C.1.16
SM: do you find it's easy to socialize with the local people?
TP: yeah yeah yeah
they are very sociable
as long as you have a beer you are okay
they love to cheers with you even you don't speak the language
and they don't speak English
they still try to cheers
SM: have you made Vietnamese friends now
after four years?
TP: yeah yeah yeah
some [ah]
mostly people I work with or I met in the work situation
sometime from going out but honestly I'm going less out now
I meet less
SM: in your circle then
I imagine with the French you speak French
93
with the Vietnamese you speak English or Vietnamese?
TP: well it depends in which Vietnamese sector we are
I have Vietnamese who speak good French
who speak good English
some we always speak in Vietnamese together
SM: so you change
it depends on the situation
TP: yeah exactly
sometimes we speak a little bit of English and Vietnamese mixed together
SM: so is there one language you prefer?
you've said you can use all three
but do you prefer one?
TP: I wish I spoke better English and Vietnamese
because at some point you are still limited
for small nuance
like when two words are very close there is always some small difference
that's what I miss from English and Vietnamese
in English I have a little more
but in Vietnamese [bof] small
C.1.17
SM: have you studied Vietnamese in a classroom?
TP: for a little while I did about three hours a week with a teacher
but I had a small vocabulary then
in Vietnamese you don't have me you I she he
and then also the person in front of you
if they are younger then they have a special name
if it's a girl then she is chi but if she's older…
you have to know how much older because she is either your aunt or your grandmother…
SM: do you find it's difficult to translate this idea to English?
TP: well…
in English if you say you it's you
in Vietnamese is more specific
SM: what would you say is your favorite thing about living in Hanoi?
TP: my favorite thing about living in Hanoi
I don't look too much into favorite things
I can't say just because of that
it's more everything together
I am good at this time in this place
so [ah] @@
I'm staying @@
C.1.18
SM: what would you say is the most unique thing about the Vietnamese?
TP: unique about the Vietnamese
SM: or about living in Vietnam?
TP: [ah]
oh it's
the atmosphere
it's very mixed of very old things and new things
you have people in a big white SUV and others in small bicycles with the Vietnamese hat
they have different time living together at the same place at the same time
you have a lot of small old pension[?] in the city
and you have some big buildings
new and very nice
totally different
but actually it lives together quite well
SM: so
these things seem like they belong there
TP: well…
94
belong I don't know
I am still surprised every time I see a very big building
but the people with the SUV and the bicycle
or people with the iPhone 7 and others have 33[?] Nokia
SM: do you think it's like this living in a different culture
as an expat?
do you feel like there's no problem?
TP: well sometimes
like the communication
for me it's not easy to speak the language
but if you don't speak it sometime it will be frustrating I think
people are pushing a lot for me to speak Vietnamese
people come in with families and want me to communicate with them
and
I think if you are living in the country
you should learn the language
SM: I agree
C.1.19
SM: if you do have a misunderstanding
if you don't understand them or they don't understand you
do you try to find another way?
or do you just ignore it and move on?
TP: mostly we try to find a different way
one time or two time
but after two times
it's not going down
we just say [bof] [gesturing away]
nevermind
C.1.20
SM: if you were going to do this again
move to Hanoi
would you do anything differently?
TP: [um]
actually no
I don't think so
I don't have regrets about anything
if you ask me this question for Australia I would say differently
@@ but for Vietnam I say no
it's okay
SM: what would you have done differently in Australia?
TP: well in Australia I was much more younger
so I was more wild party @@
if I did it again I would find a job
@@ then party
C.1.21
SM: in terms of language
did you feel prepared when you arrived there?
did you feel
for example
that your level of English was at the correct level?
TP: yes
so my English would be okay
but then so many people don't speak English so
@@ English is not enough this time
SM: so you have to learn some of the local language
TP: yes some of the basic words
but these come quite easy
95
like counting one two three
SM: sure
the things you use everyday
TP: [mm] yeah
C.1.22
SM: when you studied English in France
who were your teachers?
were they French?
TP: yes
@@ of course
always a French teacher
SM: when did you start to study?
TP: well it's not the same grade in America
but around 12 or 13
in France when you are 11 you take a year of English
and then after this you can choose which language to study
C.1.23
SM: is there anything you felt you missed out on when you first moved to Hanoi?
or something you couldn't do because you couldn't communicate?
TP: [oh]
maybe some people I met at this time
I was not able to communicate with them
basically that
I didn't miss job opportunities but
just instant moment spent with people were shorter than they could have been
C.1.24
SM: but it wasn't a problem for jobs so the job market is pretty open?
TP: in Vietnam there is not much choice for job
or you come from a big company which sends you there
or you are an English native speaker and you can be an English teacher
or maybe you can find something else
for example you are an English teacher
you can come and there are plenty jobs
SM: are there a lot of teachers?
TP: yeah @@
but it's crazy
every English native speaker you met is an English teacher
it's not more than that
I mean
you have a good salary
the conditions of work are nice
if I were an English native I would think about it too
SM: are there any non-native English teachers?
TP: I know some French people who teach English
in Vietnam there is such big demand that they are not looking too much where you are from
it's sad to say
but if you are white then it's okay if you are qualified or not qualified
it's starting to change but
two or three years ago they didn't care
you could be a backpacker
just have to dress a little bit better and it's okay
SM: so now it's becoming a bit more strict…
TP: because there are so more and more people coming
they try to get people with at least a certificate
I'm not sure what it's called
SM: do most of the teachers you meet teach children?
or adults?
96
or both?
TP: I’ve met a lot of both
many people teach children
like 13 years or lower
some people teach for big companies where they are starting to train the staff
SM: where are most of these teachers from?
TP: England Australia…
South Africa also
SM: in Prague the dominant variety is British English
this is the most commonly taught…
TP: here there are a lot
but I don't think more than Australians
SM: is any variety of English preferred?
TP: well
and this is not *my* opinion
some people prefer[ah]
American English is less [ah]
@@ of course Scottish English is very hard
SM: @@ alright
last question
you said the Vietnamese are very social
TP: most of them
but some of the older ones
they don’t
you know
some old guy doesn’t want to be social
SM: @@ sure
C.1.25
SM: how else would you describe the Vietnamese?
if you had to describe them culturally?
TP: [mm]
well [ah]
they are not in a religious way
but more ritualistic
they are always burning some paper in the street
some of them are Buddhist
but for most of them it's the culture of their ancestors
it's not the religion but
so they just burn some paper to send to the gods
and they do this in the street so you cannot miss it
and every shop you go
there is a small altar
[gesturing]
SM: did this surprise you when you first arrived?
TP: well yes…
in the shop you have this big wood [gesturing] like that
with some Buddha statue
and some
[French: encens]
SM: incense
TP: yes
incense…
and some vodka @@
pack of beer @@
and some crisps @@
@@ at first I didn't understand
SM: but now this seems normal?
TP: oh yes [gesturing]
@@ of course
97
SM: @@ okay
C.1.26
SM: do you think knowing English has helped you?
TP: people who are visiting
even knowing a few words is better
because if I didn't speak English at all then you understand anything
SM: and when you've traveled you've used English also…?
TP: [oh] [oh]
sometime [ah]
well no
all the time
everybody speaks a little bit of English somewhere in the world
98
Appendix C.2: Marius Lémieux (Interview Transcript – Partial)
Duration of Interview: <00.51.40>
C.2.1
SM: is there anything you'd like to mention before we begin about speaking English in Hanoi?
ML: about the fact of speaking English in Hanoi?
I guess the first thing that comes to mind
is that not a lot of people speak English here
compared to other southeast Asian countries
compared to Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore
these countries a lot more people speak English everywhere
so yeah that's what be my first impression
and second one would be that there is a lot of English teachers here
so it's probably due to the fact that
they're pretty [???] how well everyone speaks
every Vietnamese people want to learn English
so there's a huge amount of English teachers in Hanoi
C.2.2
SM: when you say all Vietnamese want to learn English,
is there any particular age group that is more enthusiastic about it?
ML: yeah I would say
more younger generations
like
[uhh] older generations like over 40 50
who want their children to speak English
so they don't learn themselves
they want their children to learn
and yeah they are
these younger generations
like 20 years old and younger
they're all really motivated and speak quite well compared to older generations
C.2.3
SM: in general, is English taught in schools?
ML: [uh]
yeah it's...
taught in school
like it's a
like the mainly foreign language taught in school
then they learn
[er] writing
so a lot of people can write well but not really speak much
SM: so there's not so many opportunities to practice conversation and pronunciation
ML: yeah I guess
I never really saw how they teach in a Vietnamese school
but...
yeah...
C.2.4
SM: What's your personal experience with English? You're from France, right?
ML: yeah I'm from France and I
I traveled when I was young
actually I lived for five years in India
and then for four years in South Korea
from [uh] let's see
from around five years old
to fourteen
so....
99
that's how I learned English
so when I was five I moved to India
where most people there speak English
with foreigners
and I went to an American international school there
where I learned English there
SM: so...
from 5 to 14 is an important age
ML: yeah
so I speak English at school and at everyday life
but both my parents are French
and I have three brothers also
so we would still speak French at home
SM: did your brothers go to the same school
ML: yes
SM: so when you're talking to your brothers
without your parents there
do you speak in French or in English
ML: when I was there
often we would speak more English
well it depends on the context
when we were at home we would speak French together but
we were pretty close in age
so when we were outside and hanging out with other foreign people who are non French speakers
then we would speak English together and with the other people
C.2.5
SM: did you find that as many South Koreans spoke English as they did in India?
ML: [uh] no
much less people
C.2.6
SM: how were your classes in the American school you attended?
were there English language lessons, or more normal school?
ML: it was more normal school there
it was an international school
both in Korea and India
so there were a lot of different nationalities in this school
so in the classes there were
yeah people from pretty much every country
with different levels of English
there were English language classes for people who couldn't speak as well
but for the general classes it was more normal school
C.2.7
SM: where were your classmates from?
ML: [uh] yeah so there were a lot of nationalities
mainly from Europe
so Italy, Germany
[uh] Spain I guess
and then from other
several countries in Asia
so Japanese, Taiwanese, Korean
[um] yeah I don't remember much
in the whole school there were 30 to 40 different nationalities
there were French people as well
100
C.2.8
SM: with your friends who were French, did you speak French or English in school?
ML: in school more English
sometimes if we were alone French
but most common language would be English
C.2.9
SM: I had a similar experience growing up.
why do you think that happens
that you choose to speak English despite having the same linguistic background?
ML: [uh] I think it's...
well for me it was when there were other people who couldn't understand my French language
it was to make sure everyone could understand
I think it could be a bit weird at the beginning
but then everyone gets used to it and it becomes normal
SM: in what way weird?
I don't know...
the fact that
speaking English to another French person who does know French
it just feels a bit weird
C.2.10
SM: and when you were 14 you went back to France?
ML: yeah I went back to France
so mainly my parents...
I was there with my parents and family
they wanted to go back to France so that we could...
me and my brothers
could learn French in a better way
because it ended up where we could speak better English than French
and ummm yeah
we often speak French with an English grammar
so they wanted us to speak a bit more French
SM: did it work?
ML: yeah... last 10 years in France
it was difficult to adapt at first
but then it was fine
C.2.11
SM: was it difficult to adapt to being back in France because of the language or the culture?
ML: both, the language, the culture
and the fact that it was a different environment
so when I was there in abroad
everyone else was abroad
were also people who were living abroad and had traveled
so when I went back to France it was going back to meet people who
or most of my classmates
who never left France
or even their city or village
so it was...
yeah...
not just the French culture
but the people were very different
C.2.12
SM: have you ever felt like you have a split personality?
like you have an English-speaking side
and (in your case)
a French-speaking side?
101
ML: [uh] no
I have never felt that way
it was pretty much all together
often switch
speaking sentences half in French, half in English
sometimes I think in English
sometimes I think in French
or dream in English and dream in French
I don't feel any dissociation because of it
C.2.13
SM: why did you move to Vietnam?
ML: I wanted to travel
so I was in France for about 10 years
then I wanted to go abroad
I didn't want to stay in France
and I went to Madagascar
and I lived there for a bit over three years
after three years living there I wanted to move somewhere else
I really loved it there
but it's a really small country
so I felt like I wanted to see something new
I was looking for pretty much anywhere outside of places I already knew
and found an opportunity to come to Vietnam for a job
and that's why I came here
C.2.14
SM: what would you say is the biggest difference between the places you've lived?
if you had to single out one thing for each country
ML: I would say it's the lifestyle of the people
in general yeah…
each country has a very different general lifestyle
in the way most of the people live
SM: you said Madagascar has a kind of island mentality
really relaxed
ML: yeah
more the island mentality where
they would work only the amount of hours they needed for have a good life
they would not over-exert themselves
they were very often very poor
not have much to eat
still be pretty cheerful
always with a big smile and very friendly to one another
so it was pretty different contrast from Vietnam where [uh]
the people are very
work almost as much as you can
every minute of the day
so if you can work more
if it will benefit you or your family
so… do it
and then both countries were pretty similar where
most people lived in the streets
whether the people were poor or or or or wealthy
it was just a fact
they didn't have much in their house
so they would spend more time doing stuff together in the streets
which is also a very different lifestyle from
most European or most western countries where people stay at home
and go outside for doing specific things
102
they don't really do too much
there's not [ah]
that much going on in the streets everywhere
C.2.15
SM: how about in South Korea?
ML: [uh] yeah
in Korea
for me it's pretty similar to Vietnam
in terms of the lifestyle and how the people were
[um] yeah pretty straightforward and hardworking
and a lot in the streets
C.2.16
SM: how long have you been in Hanoi?
ML: [um] now...
almost two years
C.2.17
SM: are you learning Vietnamese?
ML: yeah a little bit
I have a teacher
with who I do one hour per week
SM: it seems like a difficult language
ML: yeah actually like the grammar and everything is pretty simple
but the intonation and the tones
and the pronunciation
is really hard
with the same words always have 6-10 different meanings based on the pronunciation
so this is actually what makes it really hard
C.2.18
SM: have you ever had difficulty communicating with someone
because they don't have enough words
or they can't get their idea across?
ML: [um] yeah
pretty much everyday at work here
so yeah I mainly work with Vietnamese people
and everything is in English
so some of them have a quite good English
but most of them yeah can just speak a little bit
but yeah don't really have the words
or struggle a lot
so I become pretty good at understanding what they're saying
even if what they're saying
they're saying only half the words they should be saying
or saying some words wrong or things like that
yeah I always try to guide them to
what they're doing
and there's always a lot of hand gestures and
drawings sketches and things
and also
I work in IT
so it's very often not just basic conversation
that has a lot technical terms
or about pretty complex situations
and it's harder to explain to them all
yeah drawings and sketches
103
C.2.19
SM: are most of your colleagues Vietnamese?
ML: yeah we have the most
in my company we're about 400 people
and almost everyone is Vietnamese
and there’s about
yeah I would say around 10 foreigners
so out of the ten there's two other French people with me one Italian
one
two from the UK
and one I think is from South America
and two Americans
C.2.20
SM: do you notice any differences in the way you're able to communicate
with your Swiss and Italian colleagues
and your Vietnamese colleagues?
ML: [uh] well...
most of them have a better level of English
that's easier to communicate in general
but [um] yeah
but there's also
culturally they're closer to me in several ways
so there's some
a lot of things that that maybe go wrong
if I talk to my Vietnamese colleagues about it
or they feel offended
maybe they don't understand fully what I'm saying
or don't understand when if there's a joke or something behind
all these simple things make together some kind of different
I think that the biggest thing though is the language barrier
some of the Vietnamese people
who have a better level of English
there's less of a difference
C.2.21
SM: when you say your European colleagues' culture is closer to yours
what do you mean exactly?
ML: so in [uh]
so most of the Vietnamese people are maybe
[uh] shyer
and also have [ah]
a very strong respect for hierarchy
just the fact that
that a person being your boss or
[??] they will act a very different way
they are very respecting of times
and never make something offending
where like for …
that is
more French people or rather
European countries
even if there's still some kind of respect
it doesn't stop people from joking around or being more straightforward
the difference is much less marked than for Vietnamese people
so in a work
we can see that a lot
SM: and I understand that Vietnamese has a hierarchy system in the language
that affects what you call each person
ML: yes
104
there are relation and the age the generation
so it's always calling someone yeah
younger brother or sister older brother sister
or aunt
if they're one generation over grandma grandpa
so directly it's marked
the term whatever term you're using
and they're using toward you
means a lot and affects how
they talk with you and interact with you
C.2.22
SM: do you find that the Vietnamese try to insert this idea of social hierarchy into English?
ML: no, not really
I think it doesn't really translate
and [um] yeah in English they don't
maybe some of them at the beginning but then
when they start talking with us for a while and then they
it kind of goes away
there is a
yeah two guys
it's mainly for people whose English level is very low
they use a lot of mister someone or misses someone
or like
where you would just say the name as colleagues
so they're the same level but they feel like
they have to say something to not just say the name
so we see that
but then it goes away and they talk normal
SM: but French, like Czech
in most European languages when you first meet somebody
you should use the formal you
ML: yeah
SM: but this doesn't exist in English, so
ML: there's a lot of calling people ma'am and lady
because they don't know how to express that they are trying to be formal
yeah
because there's umm
I have some friends
she's French
but from Vietnamese origin
both her parents are Vietnamese but she was born in France
she can speak Vietnamese but never lived in Vietnam
she was living in France for a long
for a long time
I met them in Madagascar and now they're living in Cambodia
they came to visit this year
and she speaks really perfect Vietnamese
when she speaks to the Vietnamese people here
everyone would understand her
so her Vietnamese was really good
but then when
you would call someone
for example like a waiter someone like that
here Vietnamese will call them directly based on their age compared to yours
so if there's someone younger
or the same age
they would say younger brother or older brother
and this girl
when she heard me call them like that
105
she thought it was maybe [um]
not respectful
because she was associating it the other way around
where in France you have the you which is formal first
and then if you know them you use the unformal way
so she
for her in her mind
she would do that in Vietnamese as well
with this categorization of people
calling people first like
even a higher name like
older brother or older sister even if she knows you're younger
because you don't know them
so she was doing the opposite
which is actually
I don't know if before in Vietnamese they did that but for now
what I can see is no one really does that and
[uh] it would feel strange if they did that
C.2.23
SM: so you have to be aware of their specific age.
how do you know if someone is older or not?
ML: [uh] yeah you can assume
very often they actually ask each other
like
@@ how old are you
like first question they ask @@
so it's very common
so that they know and then they can say it
or if one person calls another one
[uh] so the pronoun that you use
qualifies [um]
replaces the me or you
so when they speak if they say I want to do this
and if you use the wrong name to someone
so you say me the older brother wants to do this
and the other person knows that they are actually older than you
they will say
you the younger brother will have that
so they answer without saying anything wrong
but they'll change how they call you
to make you understand no but I know that you are younger than me or
or I'm pretty sure that you're older so you probably underestimated my age or overestimated my age
SM: so it's better to be precise than
as we would do in Europe
just go for the older address just in case
ML: yeah I guess
but then you still never know
because some people might be offended that you call them older
so if you give them a generation older than you
if they are actually just a few years older they might also not take it really well
it's really weird
for me I'm a foreigner
so there's not really any problem
they excuse me
but I think for VIetnamese people they very often ask [uh]
like
in the very beginning
C.2.24
106
SM: is there anything else that you're excused for as s a foreigner
that's okay for you, but not okay for them?
ML: well it...
I guess for pronunciation mistakes
when they can still understand what you're saying
but it's not right
that's some of the things
even though most of the time they just won't understand
C.2.25
SM: how would you describe French culture, compared to Vietnamese?
ML: I would say
yeah one of the things that French culture also a lot of people are not a lot outside
so mainly yeah at home in restaurants or bars
always moving from one place to another
never ...
with a fixed target
never really just hanging around in the street just to see each other
[uh] another big difference
in the French culture for most people
they will say directly if they don't like something
or complain to whoever it is
their boss their coworker
or if something not working they just fix it without asking for permission or anything like that
the Vietnamese culture is much more for respect
they would not do anything if it's not their job to do it
they authorization
so they always make sure to first get the authorization or
ever say anything bad about their superior
or if there are bad things
so that would be a really big difference
then also French people are more
[um] individualists
so it's maybe also the fact that they
they're thinking more about their own lives or fixing things in their own house where
Vietnamese people are much more about community
always helping each other out
these would be the main differences
C.2.26
SM: how do you think the Vietnamese perceive you as a foreigner?
How do you think they would describe you?
ML: uhhh @@ I'm not sure
@@ well I
I think they're not very open to foreigners in general
especially when it comes to work because then
there's always a situation when they might think [uh]
this person maybe gets a higher salary because he's a foreigner
or he's going to be a foreigner
or he's here just because he's a foreigner
so there's always this first impression in work environments
especially in the places where I work
so they're pretty tough at the beginning
and really want you to prove yourself before they actually accept you
so they don't take you for granted and open their arms
if you're going to come in and shoot their world
then once they see [uh]
also the differences
then they start respecting you more I guess
107
they think [um]
maybe you are good
and maybe you can do that
because you are a foreigner
it helps you in English talk to [uh]
maybe customers and stuff like that
then they realize that it's differences but for the good
and you can work together
otherwise [ah]
yeah I don't know
they could also think I'm a little bit respectful
because I don't follow always this hierarchy system
where I can not say more openly what I think [uh]
not hide maybe as much
or sometimes
some of these things they feel like it's maybe okay
but they would not do it themselves because it would be weird for them
but they don't think it's necessarily something bad [uh]
it depends of course what it is
but a lot of things they would maybe
yeah be too shy
or feel weird about doing it
but seeing other people
[eh] say things or do things like that are okay
because it's a foreigner
C.2.27
SM: is that also true for the younger generations?
I’ve noticed younger generations tend to be more open
at least in Europe.
ML: yeah I think it is
can feel a pretty big difference
there's also a difference between the north of Vietnam and the south of Vietnam
in Hanoi there’s
where there's lots of government and the conservative parties
and the really big old family families
that want to keep things the same
[uh] and south of Vietnam is
really more open
and more westernized and who
the people live in the south
Vietnamese people are more and more westernized
[uh] and open
C.2.28
SM: where are your friends from?
what is the make-up of your social circle?
ML: I'm not sure
a bit more foreigners than Vietnamese people
but the difference is not that big
yeah
[uh] so yeah
like a lot of people from work
either Vietnamese or foreigners
and I do a lot of sports
like I play soccer also with Vietnamese people and foreigners
C.2.29
SM: imagine a situation where you're out to dinner with some friends and
it's a mixed group.
108
What language does everyone use?
ML: everyone uses English in general
there are some [uh]
there are some Vietnamese people who really don't speak well English
and then there will also be Vietnamese conversations
but in general they will still speak more English
C.2.30
SM: I spoke to a Japanese girl who lives in Berlin
and she said the opposite
she said that in her experience
the German people insist that everybody speak German
and if people don't understand @@
they just continue
ML: yeah I think the French mentality is probably closer to that
French people don't like speaking other languages
so even if there are only three French people they will speak French to each other [uh]
even everyone else speaks English
C.2.31
SM: do you think this might have anything to do with what you said before
that European culture is a bit more individualistic?
ML: I'm not sure if it's [uh]
more European culture
because as we can see it depends on the countries
so most of the countries like
the Netherlands Spain [uh]
even Germany
or the people I've seen abroad
have no problem speaking English
and mix communities and mix everyone with everyone
but yeah [uh]
the French in general I can see
often are one of the European countries that have struggled the most in English
and maybe it's also a result of why they don't like speaking English
because they have to make an effort to [ah]
to speak English
C.2.32
SM: you've lived in a lot of places in very international settings
do you feel like this is some kind of 3rd culture
or is it just a mix of everything?
ML: I'm not sure
how to categorize that
I would say it's a lot of different mixes based on
[uh] the different groups of people
and maybe yeah
some people do [uh]
act differently when they're amongst people from their country
and then people from other countries
or if it's an Italian and a German they will have a [mm]
some similarities in their culture and some differences
and if an Italian and a Vietnamese they're also going to have some differences
they're also very different from the other combination
I think it's more of a
many mixes
where everyone adapts to how they can adapt and [uh]
and then it's
also depends a lot if it's
people interacting with each other that [uh]
109
have been traveling
or been adapting themselves to different cultures and countries
or if it's some people traveling and moving to some country
and then people who are the locals of that country interacting with foreigners
these people who are local in their country didn't necessarily travel to other countries
I would say a lot of very different mixes [um]
depending on the situations and the people involved
C.2.33
SM: If you had to give some advice to a French person who's spent their entire life in France
and is planning to move to Vietnam
what would you warn them about?
ML: [uh] one of the first things that I try to warn people about
when they say they want to come live here
or when they don't really know anything about Asia is [ah]
maybe how crowded it is everywhere
so there's not really any space
the streets are always packed
the buildings are all one on top of another
everything [uh]
[uh] yeah so
you don't really have that much of a personal area like you have in most European countries
[uh] the other thing would be if someone has never moved or traveled
that it's a different country with a different culture
and not your country and your culture
so as someone who's moving into that country
the first thing is to try to
watch and see what's happening and respect
yeah everyone and everything
there's a lot of people for example who just arrived in a new country and maybe moved before and
maybe didn't move before and they're very [um]
unhappy when someone gives them a higher price because they're a foreigner
or treat them as a different thing
but for me it's also part of the adaptation
that if anyway you don't know what the price should be then it's [mm]
okay for you to pay more if you're only here for a week or so
if you stay there long enough to actually know the price
then [uh]
this won't happen anymore
but then [uh]
now is the time to say oh I know the real price
so it's just not to not to rush
[ah] and bring their ideas
but take the time to see what's happening and learn from everyone and then when you know
how it works in this country
then you can actually [um]
yeah make your own idea
sometimes it take more or less time like
it's like okay I want to pay a normal price I've already been here for 6 months or a year
but yeah [um]
at the beginning it happens everywhere in any country you're going to
it's part of the game
and you're a foreigner so you have to
you have to go through it
110
Appendix C.3: Valeria Zmoleková (Interview Transcript – Partial)
C.3.1
SM: I understand you're living in Seoul
how long have you been there?
VZ: I’ve been here since August
but I have been here already before for two months
so
so far is
SM: almost a year then
VZ: it's like…
8 month together?
during the whole [??] time
C.3.2
SM: why did you decide to go to South Korea?
VZ: I actually started to become interested in Asian culture long time ago
like high school
but I was learning more about Japanese culture and like anime and everything
I loved all of that
so I started to learn Japanese
and then from Japanese I moved to Korea because a lot of movies that I like
like horror movies
are Korean as well
so I started to listen to Korean music and I was like
that's interesting
and I found out that Korea has the working holiday visa but Japan doesn't so
it was way easier to go to Korea
C.3.3
SM: so originally you wanted to go to Japan
but it was easier to go to Korea
are you happy with your choice?
or would you prefer to be in Japan?
VZ: I’m very happy with my choice because
Korea is more my style
I love
I love fashion and
@@ I’m girl who needs my computer and my phone
and Korea is way better with internet
internet is everywhere
it's pretty affordable
it's one of the
I think it's the most
like it's the best internet in the world like
the fastest one is in Korea
they have internet in the subways and everything so that's pretty nice
and also they have really cheap really nice fashion
they copy a lot of really famous designers but @@
that's what I like because it's cheap and it still looks the same @@
C.3.4
SM: how would you describe Seoul?
VZ: I would say
I would say it has really like
it is really particular divided like
for example Praha is not like that I think
Seoul
111
it's like quarters and it's like
parts of Seoul are very very different from each other
even with prices and everything I think
in Praha
like if you go to
maybe Wenceslaus Square and Old Town Square
yes
maybe things will be more expensive
but rest of Praha would be the same
but so it's not like that
so has like
really like if you go ten minutes further
you gonna get cheaper food generally so it's kind of more
you know there is like a quarter that's more for like students
then there is a quarter that is for like people who are really really rich
like I said it's very
I think it's very different in that sense
C.3.5
SM: when did you start studying English?
VZ: well
I was at my primary school 4th year
so that's like 6, 7, 8
around 9, 10 years old
SM: yeah
okay so let's say younger than 10?
VZ: [mhm]
SM: did you like studying it in school?
VZ: no
because our professors were really bad well
teachers at that time right?
not professors
@@ that's university talk @@
but our teachers were really bad in English actually
after I started learning English privately
like in a private English school
[[uh]] my teacher didn't like me @@ because I knew English better than her
so that's kind of how it went
I guess it was really like
our teacher was like few lessons ahead of us
you know what I mean?
SM: yeah yeah definitely
I’ve heard that complaint from a lot of people
but I think it's getting better now
VZ: yeah for sure
SM: even in primary school I think there's just more
let's say more advanced knowledge on the teacher's part
VZ: yeah
when I was a kid it was mostly like starting
you know
because it was like after communism and everything
it's took few years that we even could learn English you know?
our parents could never learn English so
it was kind of like
one you are
one of the first kids who learned English
so like
early
C.3.6
112
SM: was there anything else about the teacher you didn't like?
VZ: yeah
yeah I think I think the whole
you know from my
my high school is a private high school
my university was American
so I can't compare whole Czech system but in my
in my primary school I think the biggest problem in Czech schooling is that they focus on memorizing
and learning language by memorizing just doesn't happen you
you're gonna be really good at reading and at understanding
but you're not gonna be able to say a word you
you're not going to be able to say "my name is"
SM: sure yeah
it’s not helpful when you actually need to use the language
VZ: yeah
yeah yeah yeah
I think from what I heard about Korea is very similar their school structure
only from what I heard because I’ve never studied in Korea
but I heard that the memorizing
the memorizing aspect is very similar in our cultures
like in Czech and Korean culture
like very focused on like memorizing
memorizing everything
even like
we are learning words
memorizing words and everything
but pronunciation, no
speaking, no
like thinking about what you're saying no way
just memorizing
C.3.7
SM: do you speak Korean?
VZ: no I speak very little but it's the thing like
@@ because I have learned it by myself I have just
memorized some things so I understand a little
but I can't say anything
I can say few basic sentences unique in the culture
you know?
I bet you know when you came to Prague like
thing like "please can I have one beer" things like that
I know that in Korean but I can't have a conversation or anything
SM: yeah
so you can handle restaurants
and the shop and
you know
the basics?
VZ: yeah
like basic few sentences I can do
and words for food are the thing that I learned the quickest @@
SM: @@ me too
me too
@@ you have to be able to read the menu
C.3.8
SM: what are you doing in Seoul?
are you working or studying?
VZ: I am actually working
I am working in [um]
like a sandwich shop
113
it's kind of something between a cafe and like a fast food chain but it's
but it's just
yeah it's just like
it's one private owner of this thing
and it
it really reminds me of something like
subway style ok you know and you
you order a sandwich and you can pick what you want inside but you can't like
pick it by seeing it
as in subway
but it's just like we
we make sandwiches
that's it my friend recommended it to me so I’m working there
I was looking for some [um]
more my major
kind of job
so like psychology
even teaching and things like that but
I can't teach English
because I’m not an English native speaker
that makes sense @@
SM: well
you can
but maybe it's harder?
VZ: yeah
I mean in Korea you can't
because you have the special
special visa
you have to have like a English speaking country passport to get that visa
SM: really?
I didn't know that
VZ: [mhm]
I mean I could do some private tutoring I think
that's not like
against the law but it's not actually like
that legal either because I’m not
I’m like earning money but I’m not giving
like
taxes and anything to anybody
so that's kind of weird so
so [um]
so mostly I’m
I’m working online as a freelancer
I translate English-Czech
Czech-English
and so far I’m doing just here
I’m doing just the sandwiches
and looking for something else to do
C.3.9
SM: so you have to get a specific visa to work there?
VZ: yeah the visa is not hard to get to get to Korea
but there are many specific visas that you can get
especially for like
for people from
who are from English speaking countries
it's super easy and the money are really nice like compared to what I earn it's
it's
you know
a lot of English teacher
114
they like teach a school they teach a lots they have a lot of hours because
like Korea is hardworking
so you have a lot of hours but you get
you usually get a flat and you get like two and a half thousand dollars per month I think
so that's like
yeah
that's like triple of what I could get even if I worked full-time @@ in my
in my place
and I work part time only
so @@
C.3.10
SM: how would you describe the people in Seoul compared to Prague?
VZ: [mm] @
SM: can you compare the people @@?
VZ: I mean
you know
I’m a psychologist so for me
like putting people into boxes is the scariest but I
we always do generalizations like I have so many things that I’m like yes
this is different
and this is how it is and this is how it is
so you know mainly I think [um]
I felt slightly warmer in Korea surprisingly you know I
I yes I’m in Korea mostly like
[um]
university parts of Seoul
so there are a lot of young students
a lot of young people and they just love fun
love partying
love drinking
so it's
it's a lot of fun and of course they are welcoming and
when you're a foreigner
you are kind of like
you have this foreigner card @@
that is like "yes, oh, foreigner, you know so interesting and I wanna speak with foreigner because they
are so different", and things like that
so that's kind of
you know in Prague I don't see that
a lot of people sometimes even avoid speaking to foreigners
because they are not confident in their English and they don't care
SM: yep I can say that is 100% true @@
VZ: yeah
in Czech Republic people just don't care about others that much
in Korea
I think Koreans are fascinating
fascinated by other cultures
especially like American pop music
American rappers
oh my god
all the young people who love black rappers
I just can't @@
I just even can't e-even
in the popular music they are just like
"oh my god black guys, can I call them nigga?"
I’m like "no, no you can't! @@ you can't call them that please no! @@ okay! @@ that's not okay @@"
I think
they're
they are like you know this
115
this like children's honest curiosity?
I think that how a lot of Korean people
like what they remind me of like
you know children are very honest?
very curious
and have no boundaries
and they ask me about everything
and they are curious about everything (inaudible)
VZ: yeah, they don't see like bias
they don't see racism and things like that
kids
they don't think about it that way but
that's how a lot of Korean people I met are
they don't-
it's
it's like they are blind to anything like racism
xenophobia
homophobia
things like that
like it seem like they have no idea about what the concepts really mean
SM: [mhm] that's good
VZ: because most
most of most of Koreans are Asians
like all of them look the same
you know
in a way like
all of them are
in Praha there are so many different people compared to Seoul
yes there are parts when they live all they are foreigners
like in Taiwan
it's mostly foreign city but other than that
in Korea
there are so few foreigners and the foreign looking people so
SM: so
anytime they see a foreigner it's something exciting
VZ: yeah it's exciting
it's exciting and they are curious
I think
about a lot of things
C.3.11
SM: are you living in a very international area
or are most of the locals Korean?
VZ: I
I think it's half-half
I live in Munjeong
that is called [???]
and Hongdae is very famous for being like a student
part
like a little student city
and there a lot of foreign students as well
so I would say
I would say [uh]
the Munjeong where I stay now
it's mostly Korean parts but
but I spend a lot of time next to it
it's Hongdae
it's like twenty minute walk
and there
there are a lot of foreigners there as well
116
even like
the famous foreign YouTubers who live in Korea
like some of them live there because it's the party city
SM: okay I see
I see
so it's the
it's the young
hip
modern area
VZ: yes yes yes
C.3.12
SM: Koreans
in my experience
seem to be the most outgoing
if I compare them with Japanese and Chinese people that I know
do you agree?
VZ: yes
that's true
yeah
that's what I think
like I have friend who spent some time in Japan
and she told me that she thinks the same
more people would approach you randomly in Korea than they would approach you in Japan
from what I heard
so
C.3.13
SM: is Korean culture hierarchical the way that Japanese and Vietnamese culture is?
VZ: same in Korea
SM: same? [uh] h[uh]
VZ: age is so important even among friends
few years difference could
few years difference could be wayyyyy more difficult to
like
[um] get closer with people
SM: I see and does this come out in the language?
VZ: it does
because they also have the polite forms as Czech people do
as Japanese people do
they have the polite versions of the language
SM: right
VZ: so
so yeah
so
so it comes
you have to be polite to person who is older even he
if he's
like
your you know
is he's you know like your
I don't know
friend
or like like
for example even in the
like
popular mu- popular groups
the guys have to be polite to each other
even though they are in the same group
because somebody's three years older than the other
117
SM: [mhm]
wow so
that's interesting
so you kinda have to always know how old somebody is
VZ: that's the second thing that they ask you after your name usually
how old you are
that's very different these are two-
they are two very different questions that I got asked in Korea very quickly
first is my age
and the second is where I live okay?
if this look like in Praha somebody would come to you and tell you "where do you live?"
and you'd be like "what the fuck?" @@
SM: yeah exactly @@
VZ: yeah
so in Korea they ask you where you live very often
SM: ok
so
to get an idea of what your lifestyle is like
VZ: yes
probably also
like how far
how far you you you know
you live
so if you gonna be friends
if you gonna meet up often
and things like that
C.3.14
SM: in my experience
Czechs are very difficult to befriend
it's almost as if you have to convince them that you're friends
VZ: a lot of people are distant in Czech Republic
and it takes time
SM: are Koreans similar in this way?
VZ: I would actually say Korea
in a way
seems
almost an opposite for what Czech Republic is
I think making friends is very easy
but making real friends is really hard
SM: yeah I understand
VZ: you know
in Czech
yeah
in Czech Republic for me
it's took time making friends in general
but then again they're real friends in Korea
people
yeah in Korea
people make a lot of like
casual friends
they are really friendly and really great with each other
but they have such a
like a
very [um]
very kind of [uh]
weather conversation
you know?
"what's the weather like" conversation
that's the-
118
SM: so it's a bit superficial
VZ: yeah that's what I think
C.3.15
SM: your friends in Korea are Korean
or international
or a mix of both?
VZ: both I have Korean friends
I have international friends
I would say it's 50/50
C.3.16
SM: and do you talk to everyone in English?
VZ: [mm] mostly
yeah I have [uh]hh
I have a roommate who's Czech
so we speak Czech to each other yeah
to some
to some Korean friends
like sometimes I use few words that are Korean because it's easier
even with my Czech friends
@@ sometimes we
we sp-
we use Korean words
because we are in Korea and it's harder to think about it in our languages
SM: sure
sure
VZ: but I usually speak English
like I would say 99% of time
C.3.17
SM: and do you ever mix groups?
like international with local?
VZ: yeah
I would say
yeah I would say
say it's usually like that
SM: so
imagine you're in a situation...
let's say you're having dinner with a mixed group of Koreans,
Czechs
and other international people
how do you communicate with everyone?
is it easy?
VZ: you know I think
[um]
the thing is with a lot of Koreans is that their English is not that great
SM: [hm]...okay
VZ: you know it's just
SM: so you said they're very good at reading and writing
but not necessarily...
VZ: yeah
they are very similar
they have very similar learning styles to Czech Republic
at least how Czech Republic used to be
how I remember them teaching us
I think Koreans have that still
like they're
sometimes they're really like afraid to speak English
because they know that it's not great
119
because they know that their pronunciation is not great
and it's really hard for them to put sentences together
well
SM: right
VZ: so it's kind of like
they may be way more shy in English
than they would be in their own language actually
one person like specifically told me that he told me
like "I am way shyer in English"
SM: than in your native language?
VZ: than in Korea
SM: I mean
I think that maybe is true for everyone @@ you know
because you have to
you have to think really hard about what you're saying
VZ: yeah you have to really think hard @@
if it's not your native language you always have to think harder @@
C.3.18
SM: you mentioned you studied Japanese
did you study any other languages at school?
VZ: yes
French
German
SM: okay
so you have
you have some good experience with like other ways of communicating as well
VZ: yeah I love languages
I’m just too lazy to learn them properly
C.3.19
SM: when you first arrived in Seoul
did you find it easy to communicate with people?
in other words
is it getting easier to communicate with people?
VZ: [uh]
yeah actually thanks to me studying
[uh]hh
like an international university
you know
I’m from New York University in Prague
I don't know if you know it
so it's in
it's multicultural I would say
and there are a lot of people from Czech Republic
Slovakia
Russia
who have pretty strong accents so
and I
I learned my English in England
for a few months
and there were a lot of people from Azerbaijan
and everywhere
so
and my parents also work in international companies
so I traveled with them
translated with them
so
120
differences in pronunciation in English
like accents and things like that
I have a really
like
not that much difficulty getting into it so
for me it was like
a little
a little bit similar to Japanese
so I kind of slightly knew
because my
my teacher in Czech Republic was Japanese
so I kind of know the Japanese pronunciation in English
so Korean is slightly similar so that was easier
SM: sure
okay
that's good
VZ: but I think more,
I think harder is for me to know how
[um]
what level of English that I used with the person
I was laughing with my friend that my English is deter-
deteriorating in Korea
because @@
because I have to
like
[um] lower my language to basics
and very short sentences
and very few words
@@
for some people to understand
C.3.20
SM: what do you do when you realize that someone doesn't understand you?
do you repeat yourself?
or just move on?
VZ: it depends
it depends
[um]
like what are we talking about?
sometimes we mix languages
like [[uh]]
I met a group of Japanese people studying Korean in Korea
so when I was sitting with them
my friend took me there
whose English is really like university level
and he took me
and he was just like
"it's my friends, bu let-let's join us
but most of them don't speak English"
so they were mostly speaking Japanese to each other
and I
I was like
I understand
I was very surprised because I have never been into
like
group of Japanese friends
you know I have spent time with my teacher
but in Czech Republic
there are not many Japanese people
SM: right
121
VZ: so I was just like "I understand everything"
but then I was like
"but I can't communicate with them
it sucks"
I was trying
so we ended up speaking Korean
Japanese
English
SM: so
some crazy mix of the three that's funny
VZ: litera-- you know literally
like because she already had some
like
Korean words in her Japanese
so it was kind of funny
I was just like
"yes, I have them too so!"
so we were laughing with each other
and trying to communicate with each other in two languages
it was so fun
so sometimes when Korean people don't understand
I try my Korean to see
like if I can explain it in Korean
I would try
but I mean if I can't
and the person doesn't understand that
it's really like
it depends on the situation
on the context
if it's important to convey the message or not
sometimes I would
I would give up
because I know that it's
it's no use
because the message I want to send is really complicated
SM: [uh]
and we have other ways we can communicate too
so you could like [uh]
say it with gestures
you could use your hands a lot
you could- [uh], draw a picture or something
but
you know
VZ: sometimes we go to google translate it's a very good helper @@
SM: yeah @@
VZ: to get the gist of it to get the gist of it
SM: yes
our good friend google @@
VZ: yeah @@
we call him uncle google
SM: uncle google?
nice @@
VZ: uncle google
C.3.21
SM: do you feel like the fact that you primarily communicate with people in English has someway
affected your social life?
VZ: [hm] I think
I think by
by communicating with people in
122
not your native language
and especially with peo-people who are not native language of that language either
non-native people of English
so if I communicate in English with someone who
who doesn't
like who wasn't born in English speaking country
for example I think already
mm
it kind of narrows down the
like the pool of people
so it's kind of different
different group of people
it's like a different sample
it's not a regular
like
I can meet anybody
kind of thing
you know?
there is al-
there is already –
there is already co- some kind of like similar experience that we share
so that makes us kind of a group
SM: I see
yeah and you have more in common maybe
VZ: yeah
so I think it's slightly easier to
[um]
like to communicate and get to know each other at the beginning
because we both have something similar
like how do you-
how do you know English?
like
where have you been, you know?
and things like that
C.3.22
SM: as a psychologist
what do you feel the biggest difference is between native English speakers
European English speakers
and Asian English speakers?
VZ: I would say
I would say that I do have more
[uh] I do have more [um] like real friends or best friends
I would say all of people that I call best friends would be Europeans I think
most of them are from Prague
SM: ok are there a lot of Czechs living there?
VZ: no I met like 2 or 3 people but yeah
I know that they are here
Korean people love Prague
they love Praha they want
everybody want to goes there
go there
they have like Czech restaurants everywhere
and so so they kind of like fascinated
SM: really they have Czech restaurants
VZ: mhmm
they have at least 3 that I heard of
I have been to one
and I have seen one that looks exactly like our clock tower
it’s in the quarter that I live next to the huanday quarter
123
but everything is so expensive there
they have like rizek and they have everything but it looks so expensive
SM: @@ well because its different yeah
yeah
VZ: yeah I would say that I feel like a lot of
[um] part of Korean of (??)
look really outgoing and they are really cheerful
and they have a lot of like same same sex [um] skinship
they call it skinship its just like touching you know
girl hugging each other and kissing each other is totally normal
guys touching each others butts and things like that totally normal
in Czech Republic what the guys do here
all the guys would think they are gay
because that’s a different
that’s completely different body closeness culture
SM: so there’s [uh] so friends you know take up each others space basically
VZ: yes
so it feels more open
feels kind of warmer
but then again often its very superficial for me
so far I havent
I have only really good friend who like really
I would say she’s one of my best friends who is Korean
or who is Asian in general
and its thanks to me knowing her for a really long
because we got to know each other in Prague
we were studying the same university so
SM: so you have that shared experience also
VZ: yes yes
C.3.23
SM: if you had to use three words to describe Koreans, how would you describe them
VZ: three words to describe Koreans
[mm][mm]
[mm][mm][mm]
I would say welcoming
I would say superficial
and I would say drinkers
SM: drinkers
VZ: @@ they drink so much alcohol oh my god
SM: @@ okay
VZ: crazy
and im from Czech Republic
C.3.24
SM: and if you had to describe Czechs using three words?
VZ: I would be
I would be [um] private
they like their own private lives
I would I would say [um] undifference
because they don’t give a shit about lot of things around them
indifferent indifferent that’s the word I guess
SM: yeah indifferent yeah
VZ: my English
going somewhere
SM: no your English is perfect
VZ: [um] and the third
and the third
124
I don’t know maybe I would say
maybe I would say traditional
SM: ok that makes sense
VZ: it should be those three I think
C.3.25
SM: knowing the types of situations in which you need to use English
would you have done anything differently while learning the language?
VZ: I think
I think what I would definitely change is [um]
pronunciation
I think
I think in Czech Republic lot of people
and same in Korea though
a lot of people don’t
don’t think about
having an accent
and having proper pronunciation of everything in Czech Republic
a lot of teachers are Czech
especially at primary school level
and they just have really
you know still for example
there is really nice example
a lot of Czech people
you have to know it as an English teacher
say sometimes
they just dont use “v”
because they think everything is “w”
so they will be like wisit @@ and things like that
because
because thats what they teach us
and thats what I still make mistakes in
and I know it
SM: sure sure
VZ: and these these pronunciation/connotation(??)
because I think
I think one of things I have advantage is
I hear everything really well
and I can copy great
like I can copy all languages pretty well
VZ: and also
and also what I think
also its very [um]
its plus for learning language but minus for speaking language
its if the word like exists in your own language
if we use like Americanisms
you know like in Czech Republic we use them
in Korea they'll use them too much
SM: sure
and that’s why it destroys their
the English pronunciation
because they pronounce Korean pronunciation
and Czech people pronounce Czech pronunciation
so that’s how Czenglish and Konglish came to life @@
C.3.26
SM: what would be a Korean example of an Anglicism?
VZ: [uh] they have a lot of words that they use that don’t
125
they don’t even use in English
like skinship for example
skinship is like the amount of touching between each other
SM: yeah
so they’re just as public
public [uh] display of affection is between girls and boys
it’s very like normal in Korea same as Japan
so they have this word
but they have for example
I knew
oh I knew one thing
they because
for example
in Japan they can’t end their word with [uh] vowel I think
what is
they have to have like
they can’t say
they can’t end with a or with o they have to always have
or is it yeah
com pu ter
yeah they have always have to have like computa
they can’t say computer so they have to have it
yeah they have to have it with
thats [uh] yeah they have to end it with a e I o u
SM: ohhhh that makes sense that explains a lot
VZ: so in English yeah
so in English they have to have like computahh progamming goo
things like that
because they have to end it with a e i o u
SM: oh my god that just explained so much
VZ: yeah and in
and in
and in Korea they have one thing that I found out
and they are [uh]
in instead of delicious they’re saying deliciousa
deliciousa dangerousa
I think there are also some Korean influence on it
I can’t pinpoint what but its always delicious-a dangerous-a
and a lot of people say the same way
that I was very surprised
I thought its was just particular for a person that I knew for friends
but yeah
C.3.27
SM: have you lived anywhere other than Korea
and you mentioned England earlier?
VZ: no I have traveled a lots thanks to my parents company [um]
it’s American company so I have traveled with them
doing translations and things like that
like interpretations and things like that
but its only like week or two weeks somewheres (??)
nothing major
I have stayed in England in Brighton
for one month at a time
like four or five times
but I (??) I have only stay this long in Korea
C.3.28
SM: were the places you traveled mostly in Europe?
VZ: [mm] mostly America
SM: ok ok [um] so you know where for example
126
VZ: I have been in Arizona few times
New York
[uh] I have been to [???]
I have been to [uh] Caribbean
I have been
I don’t know where else
I have been to Florida many times
especially with my family
in Orlando and Disneyland
C.3.29
SM: in the non-English speaking countries you've visited
have you felt that English is enough?
VZ: I would say everywhere I’ve been as a tourist
English is enough
yeah the places I have been to
I was
for example
I was really surprised at Germany
like I have been to Frankfurt
and the even kids there
like people eleven twelve thirteen years old
their English was really really good
I was very surprised
like really really surprised
[um] [uh] I was in Singapore
but their English is pretty good because they
they have like this a lot of business cooperation with other countries
so
all the places I have been to are most like
you know shopping centers and restaurants in the center
and the hotel and stuff like that
they always speak English
so I think yeah I think so far
so far where I’ve been
and when I was in Poland they also understood English well
but because I understand Polish
because its similar to Czech
I was really interested if like
if we could speak with them in Czech
if they would understand
so with my friends we were really confused
like should we speak Czech
should we speak English
C.3.30
SM: I know you like languages
so it makes sense that you are studying the language while you're there.
do you feel like you need to learn Korean to live there?
VZ: if I wanted to stay here longer I would
but its really hard because of the visa
yes its
it doesn’t make sense to speak only English
because I rob myself of conversation
very nice conversation with a lot of people
especially as a psychologist
if I wanted to stay here I would love to understand the people
and in English I just can’t
I really
it
127
it really narrows down the pool of people I can communicate with
that’s very sad
SM: so you know if you were going to stay there longer
you would try to improve the local language you know and not-
VZ: yes yes
I would like
like
my my dream would be to have my Korean at least as good as my English
but my English took me like what seventeen years
so I don’t know if I can do that in Korean @@
SM: but living there might be easier
VZ: that’s true
SM: studying in school is always going to take longer because you don’t have to learn it
@@
you just you know you have to learn it for tests
but when you live there you have to learn it to be able to order food
and be able to
you know
communicate
VZ: yeah yeah
and I live next to like a really big [um]
like marketplace
like you know
the like
fruits and vegetables and everything
and it’s a lot of like older ladies and older
like guys
we call them (???????) in Korean
like our uncles and aunts @@
all these old older people here
they don’t speak English
they really try when they see me
but they are very impressed when I
or when I say something like in Korean
they’re like ohhhh
@@
so its really hard to communicate with them in English
so I usually try my Korean
so I’m motivated now even more
because I changed my place
and I live next to the market now
so im always there
@@
but in Japan
they won't even try to speak to you in Japanese
they automatically see you as a foreigner
and they automatically speak in English
in Korea
the younger people will always try to speak in English
but the people who are
you know
the uncles aunts
the people 40 and older
they will always speak in Korean
C.3.31
SM: are they patient
when you don't know a word
for example?
VZ: you know I think it really depends
128
like some are really patient and some really like
some really appreciate you’re trying
but some people get really like
irritated with foreigners in general I think though
SM: sure sure
VZ: yeah I have like
I have one barbeque place where I don’t like to go when it’s only foreign friends
because they’re very rude to us
when we are with Koreans they are really nice
but when we are with foreigners
even if we order in Korean they still look really really pissed off
literally
its not even
yeah they look really like be bothered and a lot @@
SM: that’s a shame because @@ Korean barbeque is really good @@
VZ: yeah and this place is really good
but we have like ten other places so it’s okay
this particular really like shows
and some clubs don’t let foreigners in
some clubs don’t let American soldiers in @@
because they
yeah
because they have special
like stories that they came
they came to [um]
they came to [um] the club and got really drunk
and like destroyed half of the club
SM: oh wow
VZ: yeah because it’s never like
I’ve been to many clubs and bars
and I don’t see like Korean guys like fighting
or destroying stuff
129
Appendix C.4: Nobuyuki Yokoyama (Interview Transcript – Partial)
Duration of Interview: <<01:08:36>>
C.4.1
SM: how do you see the role of English in the world today?
NY: it's a pretty global language
and I guess
I don't know
about 90 percent
or a lot of people
there's always going to be someone
you'll always run into someone that can speak English
pretty much no matter where you go
C.4.2
SM: so you learned English in school
can you tell me about that?
NY: yeah
international school
my parents
especially my mother
they were always fascinated by English
from when she was in high school
so they have a lot of foreign friends and connections through that
kinda led to my
situation
learning English in an international school
and also her friends kids' became my friends as well
so whenever we'd hang out it was always
for the most part it was always English
actually my English is probably better than my Japanese right now
it's weird
SM: even living in Japan?
NY: yeah [uh]
yeah
I have lived in Japan my whole life
but because of
[um] yeah
I just had a lot of foreign friends from when I was really young
and I just kinda grew up with those people so
English was always kinda there
even after I went to public school
C.4.3
SM: so right now do you speak Japanese at home or do you speak English?
NY: [um] well right now
I just live with me and my sister
it's mainly English
at work too
I work in a very international company
and we fly overseas a lot
even within the company
all of us are bilingual
SM: what do you do for work?
NY: [uh] video editing
filming
C.4.4
SM: you mentioned you went to India and South Africa for work
130
what other countries do you deal with in your job?
NY: [um] we went to
[um] when was it
end of November last year
we went to Malaysia as well
we go to Thailand as well
Philippines Malaysia London
C.4.5
SM: when you travel for work
or are speaking with friends in other countries
is there anything you notice about their level of English that you have trouble with?
NY: [um] sometimes
they'll use different
words or like
the structure of the sentence will be a little bit different
but I don't know I kinda
I guess I'm used to that
like @
@@ for example
so I guess I notice a difference
but it [um]
I don't know it's hard to pin down
but I guess mainly the accent
C.4.6
SM: have you encountered any situations where you couldn't rely on English?
where you had to act something out?
for example
NY: yeah in Germany
I went to Germany to visit a friend
and she had written everything out for me
I wanted to get a bus ticket
to my friend's house
and I realized that the guy couldn't speak English
so I pulled out this piece of paper
it was hard @@
@@ but eventually
I figured it out
I had to use gestures
C.4.7
SM: what differences have you noticed between different places?
have you ever experienced culture shock?
NY: in japan everyone pretty much keeps to themselves
say the train is packed or whatever
and a seat opens up
there will just be this silent exchange
if like some guy is gesturing to a lady to sit down
even though he's in front of the seat
generally it'll be very silent
in most countries around the world
you might just say something
but generally in Japan it'll be like
they'll act like @@ they don't see you
of course you do sometimes
you do hear exchanges
but that's pretty rare
but anyway
just growing up in that kind of environment and that kind of culture
131
I guess you could say that was culture shock
that was just very different
so it took a while for me to get used to
people in Europe were very straightforward compared to people around here
SM: in what way?
NY: just normal casual talking
the way they interact with people
but it was very refreshing for me
I like that
people were nice
for me I much prefer that
I actually like that a lot more
over here you kinda have to beat around the bush
and see what the person actually feels
and a lot of times they'll say exactly the opposite of what they're thinking
because that's the
that's the polite thing to do
you don't want to offend the other person
for example if you get invited out or something
they'll be like okay yeah yeah I'll go I can make it on that day
and then on that day they'll kinda
you know
SM: instead of just saying no I can't make it
NY: yeah yeah
of course sometimes that can happen
but generally
its a very different way people communicate here
C.4.8
SM: when you're traveling around Japan
do you communicate mostly in Japanese or sometimes in English?
NY: [oh] Japanese
for sure
that's the weird thing about Japan
a lot of foreigners
they come here to teach English
[um] I don't know
that might be same in other countries like Czech
or any other non-
where the English language isn't their first language
there's a lot of English schools
or private English schools
or after school lesson kind of places
the funny thing over here
is a lot of people still can't really speak English
SM: like they can read and write
but not really speak?
NY: yeah
like their head knowledge is
a lot of times they'll have a lot of
they'll memorize a lot of words
and phrases and stuff
but when it actually comes down to speaking English
or actually using it in a practical sense
it's just out the window
SM: why do you think that is?
NY: I think it's the Japanese culture
or the Japanese
[tʃ] yeah the culture
Japanese people are generally super reserved
132
and almost shy
and [um]
you know
the general unspoken rule is
you don't [um]
go out of your way to
you know so-called bother people that you don't know
because that's not the polite thing to do
you just kind of leave them
so therefore [um]
in [ah]
I guess public environment
everyone [uh]
kinda like I said earlier
everyone just kinda keeps to themselves
and that kinda
I think over the centuries
that kinda built up
just one generation after the other
and that kinda just created this
I don't want to say introverted
because it's not necessarily introverted
but it's very [um]
you generally just keep to yourself
and [uh] yeah
and there's
on the flipside
it's super
generally people are super polite
and it's super peaceful
you don't really have to worry about going out late at night
even if it's like 3am in the morning and you're by yourself you know
C.4.9
SM: what do you think the most difficult part of going to Japan is?
for foreigners
NY: I think it's that whole
getting used to that environment
where [um]
of communicating
like because [um] you know
Japanese people aren't straightforward
and maybe
well I do see a change
especially after coming over here to Tokyo
and recently with
like people my age
it's still
you have to still be aware of these unspoken rules
generally
not that you
you don't have to be aware
if you're not aware of it
yeah you'll get very yeah confused
and it could be a little bit frustrating
C.4.10
SM: you mentioned most of your friends are international but they grew up in Japan
so do you interact with any foreigners
outside of work for example
133
NY: yeah yeah yeah a lot
actually a lot
I play in a band
I play drums
and actually all my bandmates are foreign
well except for one
and that guy as well
can also speak English too
so we all speak in English
[um] yeah one of
actually two of them are from France
one guy is from Canada
one guy is from
@@ I'm in a few bands
so I'm just naming off all the countries they're from @
one guy is from Panama
the other guy is from Mexico
yeah
SM: that's a lot of diversity culturally
NY: yeah it's interesting
it's very interesting
I love meeting people from overseas and
I don't know you get a better understanding of people in general
so I like that
C.4.11
SM: so let's say you're out for dinner with friends
and you said most of your friends speak English
but what do you do if there's someone there that doesn't speak English?
NY: [um]
generally
yeah that happens
if they're my friend
then of course I'll translate for them
and kinda let them in the circle
[uh] of course
if they're not my friend
then I'll kinda
I'll generally try to make friends with them
because yeah you know
it's nice to include everyone in the conversation
but if there's someone else and they seem to be alright
then I'll just be alright
generally of course I'll at least say hi
but yeah definitely if they're my friend
then i'll definitely let them in the conversation
because you know
I feel like
Japanese people should get used to [um]
being in an English speaking environment
and just get used to the international culture
a lot more
you know
because Japanese people are very shy
they won't go out of their way to try to join a conversation
they'll wait for someone to introduce them into
or pull them into the conversation
it's understandable
I was stuck in a conversation
134
in Germany
where my friend took me out
and there were a lot of her other friends
and all them were speaking German
and I couldn't understand a thing they were saying
and every now and then they'll speak in English
or one person would kinda translate for me
but other than that I was just kinda sitting down and observing
yeah it gets a little bit awkward
so I understand how that feels
so if they're my friend I don't want them to be stuck in that environment
[...]
for example like
if I was with my Japanese friends
and there was one foreigner
I would speak in Japanese obviously
but I would be a bit more conscious about letting the foreigner in
C.4.12
SM: you said something a couple minutes ago that was really interesting
you said people need to get used to the international culture
what is the international culture?
NY: [um] Japan
I guess once you come here you'll understand
but Japan is a very unique country
in that the people
[hm]
people are
people here
it just seems like they're not so used to foreigners
and it's really weird because
you know Japan is one of the most modern countries
but at the same time
the general public doesn’t speak English
but there's English schools all over the place
a lot of college students know a lot of vocabulary a lot of words
but they can't actually use it
and I've had a few friends
that went overseas
[um] when they were in their
their university
like in the exchange student or homestay program
but
even if they do go overseas they'll just stick with their Japanese friends and speak Japanese the whole
time
and I'll be like what
why are you doing that
and they say oh because I'm shy it's embarrassing
for me that's just
that's such a waste of [um]
and experience you know
why would you want to stay in your little bubble you know
when you know
when you're already in a different country
in a completely different environment
I don't know
Japan's just a very
I think it's just the culture thing
it all comes from a good place
135
you don't want to disturb people
you wanna kinda let them be
and kinda everything's well organized and peaceful and stuff
but I guess the flipside of that is [um]
you're just pretty much afraid of doing something out of the ordinary
I guess the other extreme is America
anything goes
like to each their own
and there are people who don't like you and people will voice that
and generally that's expected
and everyone has freedom of speech and can have your own opinion and freely voice that
over here it's like
it's all for the greater good
so you don't
as an individual you shouldn't stick out
there's this old Japanese saying where it's like
I don't know the exact English translation but it's something like [um]
[um] the
the nail that sticks out will get hammered in
that's very prevailing in Japan
people in Japan are just kinda introverted
just shy very simply
C.4.13
SM: you don't really strike me as an introvert
maybe you are
you don't come across as one
NY: [mm]
I used to be
I guess I'm not really @
I don't really consider myself to be
I just [um]
I don't know
when I'm doing something I really don't like to be bothered
but I definitely used to be
it's because of that though I think I can kinda entertain myself
and [hm]
SM: do you think your experience traveling has made you less introverted
NY: I think so
definitely
it definitely kinda pulled me out of this
like as much as [um] this international culture I was in in Japan
I was still in Japan
so just having a complete different environment was
was very interesting for me
I wouldn't necessarily say I had a hard time
but there were a lot of things that
that kinda
that I realize and learned
and I was very
for me it was just super refreshing
to get out and see a whole other side of the world
and see how people are
and the places and their environment
and everything about it
I love it
I definitely want to travel more
C.4.14
SM: in my experience in Europe
136
older generations might not speak English
but the younger generations generally do
and even very young kids can understand and even speak very well
do you find this to be true in Japan?
NY: I think so
like [um] especially in Tokyo that's very strong
or like any big city
people my age
generally can understand English
probably not as much as
let's say Czech or Polands
I still think Japan is kinda on the lower side
but I was surprised when I moved to Tokyo
it's not the same though in other cities
like smaller cities in Japan
people don't speak English
it's weird like
I always got this response of like
kinda got idolized by people my age or whatver that couldn't speak English
they were like oh my god it's so amazing
it's not that amazing
you guys get taught English in school
you just need to actually go out and like talk to people
you know because you have all the knowledge in your head
oh but i'm shy
@@ yeah but @@
C.4.15
SM: does this affect how you act
or interact
with people?
NY: there's definitely a period of time where
you know I felt like I had two different personalities
like the Japanese proper side
and the normal a lot more casual relaxed foreign side
and there was definitely a time that I
especially during the adolescent ages
I did have that inner struggle
because Japan's culture is very strong
and it's super heavily into respecting your elders
and this hierarchy of leadership
even within the schools and stuff
so there's definitely a lot of that
but
I [um] you know
especially having a lot of friends from other countries
and then of course finally going out
there's a lot of
you realize that people are people
it's [uh]
you learn how to
like there's definitely a general rule of like communication
here in Japan it's weird
there's three generally three ways of speaking
there's a Japanese normal way of speaking
which is
and there's another thing called “Kagol”
which is respectful speaking
pretty much you speak a certain way to people that are older than you
or your boss or
137
someone like ultra formal
and then there's “Sonkaygu” which is like ultra ultra respectful speaking
and it's a very interesting
and you also have to change like how you act
that's why you see in movies or whatever
Japanese people always bowing to each other and it just doesn't stop
it's that kind of thing
C.4.16
SM: do you still feel like you have this division of personality?
NY: [um] not really
well you can't
of course I'll
you have to know when and where to be a little more
yeah like
I don't think [um] I don't think that it's really the norm over here
but I do feel that it's important
at least for people around my age or younger
to just get used to that
because that's also a big part of what I feel is hindering Japanese people from
from having [uh]
a bigger perspective
or a more international relation
even on a personal level
because if you're constantly thinking of
oh how is this person thinking of me or
should I be a little more polite or should I
[na] [na] [na] [na] [na]
then you're never going to be who you really really are
and
so that's
and it's kinda weird because I guess that's normal anywhere
but here in Japan like I said
the [uh]
it's a lot more of a team mentality
or like a
SM: a community mentality?
NY: yeah a community mentality
and individual is at the bottom of the list
so but I think there [uh] I think
Japan could use a little more of people with a little more individuality
C.4.17
SM: how would you compare this with
with people you’ve interacted with while traveling?
NY: the way that Asians and Europeans express respect is very different
in that
Asians generally it's more of a fixed thing
whether it's like bowing and [um]
[um] what kind of
there's more some kind of
I won't say ritual
but there's a lot more [mm]
SM: maybe that's the right word?
ritualistic
I've head this word used to describe Southeast Asians as well
NY: maybe
I think with Europeans you can definitely see it
but it's generally a lot more casual
SM: and it's more verbal I think
138
less body language and more in the structure of the language
NY: there you go yeah
yeah yeah
so I think that's a very interesting thing to see
yeah [um]
yeah
yeah @@
139
Appendix C.5: Yumiko Nakanishi (Interview Transcript – Partial)
Duration of Interview: <<00.53.42>>
C.5.1
SM: so you’re from Japan and living in Germany
do you use English to communicate in Germany?
YN: yeah both [uh]
but I'm a master's student right now
and [uh]
in our department [clears throat]
there are a lot of international students
and that's why we always talk in English
but in the seminar where there's professor
we have to speak German
SM: so you speak German
YN: a little bit [gesturing a small amount]
small small
what are you doing?
what happened yesterday?
or something
C.5.2
SM: you take classes in German? I can't imagine taking classes in Czech
it seems like it would be really difficult
YN: @@
I can manage
@@ you know
C.5.3
SM: you mentioned that you have also lived in Edinburgh
were you there for school?
YN: yeah yeah yeah
at the university
in Bachelor
SM: in the middle of your Master's?
YN: @@ [unh] [unh]
what happened [mm]
I don't know either
SM: and you completed a program there in Edinburgh
YN: yeah I think so
yeah [mm]
SM: in Edinburgh
SM: these classes are probably not in German
YN: @@ yeah yeah
I had to speak English always
SM: right
C.5.4
SM: what is the difference between Berlin and Edinburgh?
YN: Berlin and Edinburgh
I was [uh]
fascinated
with the difference between German and Edinburgh
first is maybe
the character of the people
and secondly the
I don't know [uh]
the system of education
and third is language
140
maybe Edinburgh is
they speak Scottish [eh]
it is so so
so difficult to understand what they say
because they have a strong accent
and maybe I don't know exactly
maybe they have a specific saying
SM: like idioms?
YN: yeah yeah [unh] idiom
I never heard
so [unh]
SM: can you give me an example?
YN: [eh]
I don't know
maybe
something [bla bla bla] down
@@
something in the communication
in the presentation
student presentation
tutor say [hn] [hn] [hn] [hn]
[hn] [hn] [hn] [hn] down
so @@
or something like that
and after the seminar
after the presentation
my student friend asked me
can you understand
could you understand what he say
[hn] [hn] [hn] down
meaning
I'm [uh]
I'm really
how can I say
I was [um]
I cannot think of the word [uses translator]
just a moment
disappointed
I was disappointed
that's mean I was disappointed
SM: let down?
YN: let down
or more [unh]
I know let down
but he say more
yeah yeah [gesturing]
SM: @@ something like that
YN: @@ yeah @@ something like that
how can I say
during the conversation to Scottish people
with Scottish people
I give up to understand them @@
@@ sometimes I just
[mm] [mm] yeah yeah true true
and the person which I talk to
[eh?] it was a question
C.5.5
SM: so that's for the language how are the people different?
YN: [ah] [ah] [ah]
141
for example German people is more
closed sort of
don't be so open
but Scottish people
maybe UK
people in the UK is more open to me @@
because when I go to the supermarket
everybody says hey hi there hi hello
with smile [smiling]
but Germans
in Germany supermarket
in German supermarket
nothing
even at the cash
[German] alo [straight face]
SM: this can be awkward
YN: yeah [mm]
and I always feel pressure from the German people at the cash place
because I feel
I have to finish soon
SM: as quickly as possible
YN: as quickly as possible [unh]
because they don't smile
they don't like me
and nothing to say
and just
[serious facial expression] [speaking German]
C.5.6
SM: so the Scottish people were more friendly?
YN: yeah more friendly
and I think Scottish people or UK people
they are similar to Japanese people because
they don't also say honest opinion
SM: they don't say?
YN: I guess so
not like German people
they're more [uh]
SM: more polite?
more polite yeah [unh]
and maybe not a good word
but more selfish
they can communicate like selfish
if they don't think it's not good or bad things
but she they don't say
it's not interesting
SM: so
if you said
how does my shirt look?
oh it's a beautiful color
YN: @@ oh
I like it
but just
just like that and don't go farther
the conversation isn't go farther
C.5.7
SM: how would you compare the Japanese to Germans or to Scottish people?
you said the Japanese are more similar to the Scottish
are there any differences between them still?
142
YN: you mean Scottish?
[mm] I think it's came from education system
difference of education system
so in the Scottish
students talked a lot
more than teacher
in the conversation at the university
they talk a lot
more than tutor
they manage the conversation in university
because we are art student
I didn't join the seminar
or more academic things
lecture just listen the story
and [mm]
SM: and you were more active as a student?
YN: [unh] [unh]
as a student in the discussion
almost all of the student say something
or speak out something
but on the other hand in Japan basically actually we don't have discussion things in university
that why I'm not used to talk or speak out in front of the people
and almost the teacher or professor talk a lot
even in the discussion
SM: so it's more lecture based
YN: yeah more lecture based
so that's why I didn’t get how or which timing
I can speak out
in the public space
so if somebody ask me
how do you think
or yeah it's your turn
I can speak something
[mm] I can say something
[unh] but if I don't have opportunity to speak out
SM: because you don't want to interrupt?
YN: and know how I can interrupt
this was my problem
C.5.8
SM: how does this make you feel as a student?
YN: [mm]
I was kinda
I felt kinda
isolated @@
@@ isolated but maybe
it's because of my character
but I just feel solely myself
and I thought sometimes
sometimes I thought I am disability
or I am not capable
or something [mm]
C.5.9
SM: is this the same for all classes including language classes?
when did you start studying English?
YN: [mm]
I started study English from 12 no
from 13 years old
from the junior high school
143
until senior high school almost six years
and I would like to say
the Japanese English education system is horrible
SM: really?
in what way?
YN: yes horrible I would like to say
we just listen what the teacher say [gesturing input]
maybe we have few conversation classes in the school
but not so many
not so much
and we always study grammatic things
and maybe the aim of English education
in Japan
is just [mm]
pass the examination
for entrance
entry for university
C.5.10
SM: so your experience as a student in Japan was very passive
just listening with little talking
how did you feel when you arrived in Germany?
YN: so I was really shocked
because I couldn't speak English as well
when I arrive in German
my English was horrible
at the time
and I couldn't understand the difference between am verb or is
and do and does
and the listening also
to listen the English native speakers English Americans
it was also horrible
[mm] difficult
C.5.11
SM: are there a lot of Americans in Berlin?
YN: not a lot
in our department
there are
[mm] two mostly Americans
yeah
and one or two English
SM: from England?
YN: yeah from England
C.5.12
SM: in your program, where are the people from?
YN: [mm] it's really
America England French German
@@ Germans
Mexico
South Africa Korea Japan
China [mm] Portugal
[mm] maybe more
Ireland
SM: Ireland is a whole other accent
YN: @@
so, how does that work you all speak German in class?
YN: yeah
almost
144
SM: do you all speak German out of class?
YN: yeah
for example in the supermarket in the [mm]
[mm] breadshop?
SM: bakery?
YN: yea, bakery in the restaurant
C.5.13
SM: is there any situation in which you speak English most of the time?
YN: [mm] I always speak English to my friends
yeah but it's also half and half
it's depending on the situation
or the person who I talk to
SM: so
if your friend speaks Japanese you speak Japanese
if your friend speaks German
do you speak German or English?
YN: [mm] German [unh]
SM: so you prefer German?
YN: no @@@
no I prefer English
SM: what if you're in a mixed group?
YN: it's also depend on the situation
maybe German
German because here it's German
yeah or the speaker
there is a speaker in the group
the speaker speaks English
then maybe we speak English
but maybe then slowly the group
divided into several groups
in the group
[gesturing] English speaker
[gesturing] German speaker
[gesturing] @@ Japanese speaker
SM: so
if you're in a group having dinner
or having drinks
there will be smaller groups within the large group
YN: yeah [unh]
or maybe we try to speak German
SM: was this the same in Edinburgh?
breaking into smaller groups?
YN: no no
everybody speak English yeah
SM: where were your classmates or friends in Edinburgh from?
YN [eh]
America England Helsinki
maybe china
I saw a lot of Chinese students there
C.5.14
SM: and so
in my project
I'm comparing European English
which is a very big area
and Asian English
which is another very big area
do you notice any differences between these two types
European and Asian?
145
YN: of course from pronunciation
and [mm] structure of language
yeah I think so
because Japanese language doesn't have subject
I mean
we have subject
but it's not necessary to express
and that's why we can understand without subject
like [Japanese] aksi
aksi meaning so hot
in the summer
like so warm
and Japanese people always say aksi meaning I'm really warm
I'm feeling hot
aksi aksi
we don't use subject
SM: in English we would say "it's really hot"
YN: right
it it's a kinda
I don't know
so that's why I always
in the beginning study English
re-studying English in Germany
or study German in German
it was really hard to capture
to master use subject always
it's hot
why I have to say it? @@
YN: and the pronunciation
the pronunciation is still hard for me
one day I speak to the man who came from Manchester
and his accent was really strong I really I totally didn't understand him
and but I tried to talk to him
and he said I understand you but you don't understand me
he say like that
@@ exactly
C.5.15
SM: in your English classes in Japan
did you use a lot of listening resources?
YN: [mm]
[mm] not so many
maybe 20 percent
or 30 percent
and we have one class a week
like conversation with native English speaker teacher
and she or she or he
come to the class and talk
maybe talk
but I don't remember
SM: so this wasn't your usual teacher
yeah
my usual teacher came from Japan [mm]
the ELT class was really course special
C.5.16
SM: did you like your classes? did you enjoy them?
YN: not really @@@
@@ in junior high school
my English test was really horrible
146
I always get eight points
how can I say
in the examination
we have to
how can I say
maximum 50 point
SM: a perfect score was 50?
YN: [unh] [unh] perfect score 50
but I always get eight score
or ten scores
after I go to the [uh]
high school
I change the style of study
English study
I just
how can I say
I just
SM: memorize?
YN: memory the books [mm]
[unh] books which use in the class
SM: did this work?
YN: [mm] it worked it worked
in senior high school 100 score it's perfect
I always get 8[?] 9[?]
SM: eighteen?
or eighty?
YN: no not eighteen
eighty ninety
C.5.17
SM: did you feel prepared for speaking to people in English in Berlin
or in English in Edinburgh?
YN: no no no no no [gesturing]
the examination [mm]
it's just grammatic things
SM: did you also take English classes in Berlin?
YN: yes yes yes
SM: or
in your video
you told peter about some Skype lessons with Filipinos?
YN: @@@@ [unh] @@
I don't take Skype lessons I just join in the normal English class which
which had
which has been organized by the German university
C.5.18
SM: was this class different than the one in Japan?
YN: yeah because [mm]
the teacher speak only English
but [mm]
I found it's more
how can I say
practical
more practical than Japanese language course
SM: like survival English
YN: [unh] survival English
and the student talk a lot within the student in the class
SM: was your teacher there German?
YN: the teacher is Indian
but she lived in England for a long time
147
C.5.19
SM: have you ever felt
in any of the three places you've lived
like you couldn't communicate the way you wanted to?
YN: [mm]
oh maybe I have [mm]
but momentu @@ momentu@@
I will think for a little time
[mm:]
for example
it is really hard to explain about Japanese expression in English
well in German as well
I don't know @@
maybe it's also difference between the language structure
but Japanese word is really imaginable or conceptual words
that's why we don't need explain to explain so much
SM: what would be an example in Japanese?
YN: oh @@@@
or it's anything but
I'm writing now thesis in English
and I have to explain
sometimes I have to sometimes explain about one word in English
for example [Japanese] yome
yome is [eh]
yome is a daughter in law
but yome in Japanese
yome including a lot of meanings
SM: right so
YN: yome means she is low
she has a low position in family
or she has to follow the order from family
or something like that
it's more
how can I say
meaningful word
yome
but if I
it doesn't work
if I write yome means daughter in law
it doesn't work
the people who the native speaker
cannot understand the meaning exactly
SM: you have to find some sentence to explain
YN: yeah yeah yeah exactly
I have to write three or four sentences to explain about one word
so if I try to explain one word in Japanese
I need to explain background of
culture background
or history or something
it is a difficult things
C.5.20
SM: you mentioned you're writing your thesis in English?
YN: yeah yeah in English [mm]
SM: but your program is in German
YN: @@ yeah but we can choose
SM: [ah]
so you prefer English
YN: yeah yeah yeah @@
148
not German
C.5.21
SM: what would you say is the difference between speaking and writing in English?
YN: ohhhhh
speaking is more difficult than writing for me
because speaking
when I speak in English
I cannot take the time [eh]
I have to say something immediately
so [mm]
[unh] in writing I can manage
I can reconstruct the sentence
and I can search the word
I can look up to
SM: you can look up the word
YN: I can look up the word
in a conversation I cannot do that
English language or conversation in foreign language
came from experience
when I
if I talk to
if I speak to a native English speaker or native German speaker a lot
then my English or German is going to better than before
SM: with practice
YN: practice yeah [mm]
it depends on the situation which language we use
we
in the friends
with professor with
in company
C.5.22
SM: what do you do if someone doesn't understand you
at work at school or with friends
YN: what I do @@
[eh] I don't know
I always use hand [gesturing wildly]
sometime I draw [pantomime’s drawing]
I want to say [pointing at drawing]
I don't know it also depend on the person
if the person who I talk to is
not so open
not so kind person I don't
maybe I will give up to having conversation with the person
C.5.23
SM: can you describe the Scottish in 3 words?
YN: [ehhhhhhh] @@@@
I just can say ey ey aye
aye is yes
aye aye is yes yes in Scottish
SM: how about in terms of their personality?
or their culture?
YN: ehhh I don't know
Scottish people Scottish people
it's also depend on the person
in generally they always say
[speaking Japanese rapidly and gesturing wildly]
@@@@
149
@@@@
SM: wait what? @@
YN: @@@@ [unh]
I cannot explain they are
even woman and man like
[indistinguishable facial expression] @@
@@@@
SM: what is that?
they are determined?
YN: no no not determined like
more [speaking Japanese]
I don't know how can I say that
[using a translator]
STABILITY
SM: stable?
do you mean serious?
YN: stable
just my imagine
aye aye [serious face]
C.5.24
SM: what about Germans?
YN: strict
and honest
and strict @@
for example when I bang
how can I explain
when I
I couldn't see the glass in front of me
and I just [gesturing]
SM: you ran into it?
mmm and I
@@@@@@
I laugh at them say
@@ I attack to glass @@
German will say [serious face] [tsk] it's okay [serious facial expression]
it's no problem
@@ please love me
really strict
SM: strict
maybe straight-faced?
it's not easy to make them laugh
they're serious
YN: [unh] [unh] [unh]
serious yes serious also
SM: @@ okay
too serious @@
YN: @@@ yeah @@@
C.5.25
SM: alright one last question
how would you say that knowing English has affected you personally?
has it made your experience different?
YN: maybe it has made my Japanese
is I don't know
in the conversation
in Japanese
my style to have the conversation is a bit changed
SM: did you notice this
or did your friends and family notice it?
150
YN: my husband say that
you're getting become a little bit logical than before
SM: more logical or illogical
YN: logical
you always ask me why?
what?
how come
and I also become that's
the words or the texts which
among Japanese people
is really abstract
I couldn't get what they say exactly
it's good in Japanese
but when I try to translate a Japanese sentence
a text in a book into English
[baa] what are they trying to say @@
they really abstract
and maybe but if I don't speak English
I can't understand what the text say abstractly
SM: so you understand the words but not necessarily the whole
the whole text
YN: [mm]
SM: right
151
Appendix D:
Transcriptions of Selected Excerpts from Interviews with ELT Professionals
152
Appendix D.1: Raymond Sayward (Interview Transcript – Partial)
Duration of Interview: <<01:14:62>>
D.1.1
SM: so
what do you think of when I say "English speaker"
RS: [um]
@@ that's a very general question
my first thought is probably
like
an American
a white American
SM: okay so
like yourself?
RS: probably yes
honestly
D.1.2
SM: you have taught English in the past?
and are currently an English teacher?
RS: [uh] not currently in the classroom right now
but yes
I have taught and will teach again
D.1.3
SM: how long did you teach English?
when did you start?
RS: [uh] roughly ten years
[uh] I started right out of college [um]
about ten years
SM: and that was in the US
RS: in the US
Taiwan
and Korea
and online @@
very important
SM: @@ yeah
you're starting up a company
right?
RS: yup
SM: so this wil be online teaching
RS: yeah
D.1.4
SM: so
you taught English for about ten years
what kind of English did you teach?
RS: in Taiwan and Korea
English as a foreign language to young learners
[uh] and that was from
pre-k to sixth grade or seventh grade
and then
in the US
was [um]
English for academic purposes in an intensive English program
and adult
adult education basically
English for long-term immigrants to the US
SM: so general English
153
RS: yeah
SM: and aside from your experience in Asia
where in the US did you teach?
was it in Boston?
RS: Boston and just outside Boston
yeah
D.1.5
SM: for English for academic purposes
how would you describe the
let's say demographics of your students
RS: so
I always want to qualify that it was mixed
and there's always that don't meet the the
the typical but
if I had to characterize it would be people who
were somewhat privileged in their own country
they are
traveling to the US [um]
for
for [um]
for higher education
or sometimes post-graduate education
they need English for their studies
D.1.6
SM: for the rest of them and I suppose that's
for the young learners as well as the immigrants in the US
obviously we're talking about different age groups so
this might not be really comparable
but what would you say was the general [um]
motivation for taking English lessons
RS: oh
both are very different
for the young learners and the immigrants
for the immigrants it's
to survive
to go to the grocery store
[um] we actually would ask
we ask them as a matter of course in the application
you know what is your goal for English
and
we usually kinda want them to say something about
going on to work in the US
or going on to higher ed or something
for the most part
the initial answer is just @@
like
obviously I need English
I live in America now
but when you really get them to put it in their own words
what they're looking for
it's most often the grocery store
the doctor
my kids' teacher
that kind of thing
D.1.7
SM: and for the kids?
was this the kind of situation
154
where their parents put them in classes?
or...
RS: yeah
and even
even the difference between the kindergarteners in Taiwan
they didn't even question it @
they just go to school
and they're not at an age where they ask you know
why in the broad sense of life am I learning English
it's just
I go to school and I speak English at school and this is what I do
the older kids in the cram schools
had questioned it
and very often @@
didn't really care about English
or they did
but it was still like
oh because mom makes me do this
D.1.8
SM: for English for school
are we talking about English language programs
the whole of their classes were taught in English?
or it was just a foreign language?
RS: it was the “Bushy Ban”[?] culture
so it's afterschool cram schools
that are specifically dedicated to certain topics
one of which is English
so they'd come to us after school
and have like
two hours of English class
SM: that's interesting
we
I mean we have after-school language programs in the US
but not to that extent I think
RS: oh yeah
and it's
these kids would often have three or four Bushy Bans that they'd go to
it would be taekwondo one day
trombone the next day
English the next day
sometimes one after another
and they'd be in
they'd go to school
two Bushy Bans
and then don't get home until eight o clock at night
it's crazy
and it's totally normal too
it's not like
just rich kids
D.1.9
SM: what do you think the cultural motivation is for that?
is it just like
to keep them out of their parents' hair in the afternoon?
or
to improve them as people?
RS: I don't think it's to keep them out of their parents' hair because
there's often a huge support network where
they can stay with their grandparents
155
in fact
they're often going back to their grandparents after that
not to their parents
if I have to guess
I would say it's just high value on education
they see education as really highly valued
as the key to success
in the collectivist culture
and there's something about how
collectivist cultures and
collectivist activities like going to school
I don't know
there's just a different value system there I guess
D.1.10
SM: how is their level evaluated in these cram schools
do they take placement tests?
is it an interview?
RS: yeah @
achievement tests at the end of each unit or whatever
but I mean
they're ultimately trying to take the TOEFL eventually
SM: so to have some
on-paper qualification
RS: but also
if your curious about evaluation
there's a weird culture where
you as the teacher
are not expected to be honest about a child's performance
they're a customer
and nobody's getting below a B
the worst kid in your class gets a B
SM: really?
RS: the best kid in your class gets an A+
the range is A+ to B
a B is failing
SM: I've had some experiences with
Asian students you know
giving a lot of gifts towards the end of a semester @
but I didn't know it was to the extent that the teacher's not expected to
or the teacher's expected to be generous in their evaluation
RS: oh
forbidden from going below a B
I was given back my report cards the first time I did them and told
no
this is wrong
you're not giving this to our parents
they're paying us a lot of money
give them a B
[um]
@@ it was infuriating
but
yeah
D.1.11
SM: how do you justify that
and still maintain a desire to
you know
impart knowledge on these
kids essentially
156
how does it make you feel as a teacher?
RS: yeah
well my answer now is probably very different from what my answer would have been
at the time when I was teaching at that kind of school
now looking back at it
I think
school isn't about grades
[um]
I don't really care what grade I give you
I care how you perform and
grades kind of just incidentally figure into that
I think at the time my thought was
alright
there's just a different scale here
and a B is the bottom of the scale
and an A+ is the top of the scale and
the thing is
those parents and those kids knew
when they got a B
that a B was an F
D.1.12
SM: what about evaluation for younger kids in Taiwan?
are they evaluated?
RS: [um]
SM: or is it just you know
you're here
that’s enough
RS: they were
I mean in class
it was very very informal
so so
in games and stuff was how I would evaluate that the kids
got what I had taught
you know
so the informal assessment in class
with a game
where they're demonstrating knowledge
I don't actually remember how we conveyed that to parents [um]
it must have been something like
oh no
our Chinese teachers
we had Chinese co-teachers
and they would give report cards to the kids based on what they observed in our classes
we just had to give the okay
D.1.13
SM: so what are you doing now?
RS: I’m the program administrator for a community language program
in Chinatown
we teach English to people in the neighborhood
[uh] so it’s mostly Asians but
our doors are open to everyone
but it’s mostly locals
SM: what are your responsibilities there?
who makes the decisions about
the curriculum for example?
or course development?
RS: I do
uh well
157
I do but
I mean
in our program
the teachers do get a lot of say
in what goes into the program
but I
as an administrator
take their suggestions and I sit down in my office
and I pick those suggestions that make sense to me
D.1.14
SM: you’ve taught for many years
does this [uh]
does this change the way you approach
approach your role as administrator?
RS: yes
I mean
I mean it should but
the truth is
that we have to demonstrate a
certain amount of improvement
because
we’re state-funded so
that’s the reason that
to keep our funding
we have to show test scores and
positive evaluation
and I have to make sure we’re showing that and
that part isn’t always as fun
as it is to be in the classroom
it’s a lot of
SM: paperwork?
RS: paperwork
and
just red tape
D.1.15
SM: have you studied any other languages?
RS: I have studied other languages
I studied Spanish in school
but not
not to the level of fluency I would like
this is a limitation to me as a teacher
SM: what do you mean?
RS: I haven’t been pushed through language instruction
to that level
all the way
that’s a
that’s a whole experience I just
I don’t know what that’s like
SM: do you think that’s important?
you can be an effective teacher without having learned another language fluently
can’t you?
RS: you can but
I don’t know
I think it helps if uh
you have
some personal experience of
you know
158
know what it’s like
SM: to act as a model?
for students
I mean uh
to model success in the language?
most people would argue that a native speaker
a native speaker is a better model
linguistically
RS: well
in the sense that uh
in the sense that we know
I don’t know
we know how to make the language work
but do we really know how the language works?
D.1.16
SM: so are we
two native speaker English teachers
prepared to admit that non-native speakers
non-native speakers might be better at our job than we are?
RS: that’s exactly what I’m saying
and I’ll continue to say it
I wrote a paper on that
but it’s not that they are better or
we’re worse
it’s
but in relating to students
it’s true
what I was saying before
I don’t
I don’t know what it’s like to achieve more than basic skills in another language
and be pushed all the way through the system
you know?
a non-native speaker is better equipped for that.
D.1.17
SM: most language schools
here in Prague at least
and we’ve both
we’ve both taught in Boston
most schools uh
let’s say value
most schools value native speakers over non-native speakers
RS: right
that’s true everywhere
everywhere I’ve taught at least
but maybe uh
maybe we shouldn’t
SM: what about the student’s perspective?
most students I’ve encountered
they don’t really feel comfortable um
they don’t feel comfortable with a non-native speaker
as a teacher
RS: sure
but they don’t always
the average student
the average student doesn’t know uh
what
I made a point of hiring two non-native speaker teachers
for our program
159
and I’ve gotten a lot of
but I’ve had students come up to me and say
hey
I want a native speaker
they actually request
hey I want
what basically amounts to
a real teacher @
and I get that but
but I also know that
after two weeks with their teacher
they’re happy
they stop complaining
but the higher-ups
they complain as well
I’ve insisted
on keeping these teachers
and given them reasons for
for my choice
they accept it
but they uh
they want native speakers
D.1.18
SM: you mentioned having to show uh
having to show progress
in your program
that you’re state-funded and need to uh
demonstrate progress
RS: yeah
SM: how do you do that?
what
how do you measure progress?
do you use standardized tests?
RS: standardized tests
standardized tests don’t test enough
of what I think of as applicable skills
SM: right
it’s more about how much you can remember
RS: rather than how well you know the material
and
whether or not you actually understand it
we use achievement tests
we have to
to show progress
but I personally feel it’s much more
much more important to show improvement
if a student comes to me and says
I went to the bank yesterday
and they feel they’ve learned something useful
that’s much more rewarding to me
D.1.19
SM: how do you
what do you think is the best way to address
how should teachers address students’ needs in the classroom?
RS: well [um]
you have to know [uh]
you have to know what a students’ needs are first
but [um]
160
for example
in our programs
actually this was really great
a teacher at our program in [name of institution]
she came up with this great way of
a lot of our students are looking have jobs in
or are looking for jobs
in the service industry
so
for example
one of our teachers set up a
she basically set up a grocery store in the classroom
with different departments
she had a meat department
bakery
deli and you know
she even set up a register
and she said okay
I’m a customer
and I need to buy some groceries
and she set students up at one of the stations
she went around to each station and played the part of a customer
@@ like giving them a hard time too
asking all sorts of questions @@
it was great
the students they
they really value practical skills like that
they don’t feel comfortable in these situations when they leave the classroom
so what
what better way to prepare them
for the real world
than to replicate it
D.1.20
RS: when students come to us
we ask them to tell us what their needs are
the problem is
and in our program we’re dealing with people that
some of them have no formal education background
we actually have a mix in our classrooms
people with Master’s degrees
we have people that are doctors
in their own countries
and they just
they need enough English to complete daily tasks
SM: right
RS: a pushback to the need to show quantifiable progress
we actually put it in our goal statement
to create an environment that strives to achieve your personal goals effectively
so we really consider a student’s needs when
when we place them in a course
D.1.21
SM: how do your students get placed in specific courses?
are you responsible for that?
RS: we all do placements so
I do them as well but
the majority of them are done by our teachers
SM: how do you evaluate a students level for placement?
our placement test
161
I really like it
it’s one of the only placement tests I can recommend
it’s authentic and evaluated against three criteria
the ability to understand the question
ability to be understood by the tester
and grammatical complexity
SM: in their production?
RS: right
and it’s a really good
I really like our placement test
for example
one way we use to evaluate a student’s needs
especially when we’re dealing with a low level of proficiency
is to show a page of photos like
someone at the store or the bank
shopping
then we ask people to tell us if they see themselves there
SM: if they identify with the person in the picture?
RS: if this is something they see themselves doing
it helps in uh
in deciding on the curriculum for the course as well
or placing the student in the right class
D.1.22
SM: what makes a school successful?
RS: teachers
its teachers
good teachers make the difference
between positive student outcomes
and failure
SM: what makes a good teacher?
RS: a happy teacher
SM: @@what makes a teacher happy? @@
RS: a good supervisor
a supervisor who understands the perspective of a teacher and
isn’t focused solely on the business aspect
job security
paid preparation time
that’s huge
you’ve got to have paid preparation time
but
ultimately there are
we have limits imposed on us by
because again
we’re state funded
if it were up to me
we would have weekly meetings on curriculum
lots of teacher input
lots of planning time
but I can’t pay teachers for so much time
so much time out of the classroom
because I need them in the classroom
and we don’t have that many resources so
I need them in the classroom
but if it were up to me
162
Appendix D.2: Klara Krieger (Interview Transcript – Partial)
Duration of Interview: <<01:18:53>>
D.2.1
SM: (introduction to the project)
KK: I mean
it's a pretty unique situation we have with English
being the only language that has more non-native users than native users
so I find it quite interesting to see what
what's happening to the language
D.2.2
SM: can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
KK: [um] yeah
I'm a teacher trainer
and
basically now that's mainly what I do
I teach from time to time
but mostly I'm observed when I'm teaching by
by trainees
so there's very little kind of
authentic classroom time
if you want
and most of the time I spend in the classroom with the trainees
either teaching them something
which means like
like you took a TEFL course
you know what it
what it contains more or less
but like
teaching them how to teach
[um]
or
sitting in a class observing them teaching and then
do feedback with them on what's good and what's not too great
and I do that for certificate course
which is basically the TEFL course people know
but also
like I've recently started doing it on diploma courses
which is
a higher level qualification
so [um] yeah
it's very very interesting
...
yeah
so it's a very interesting field
but it
like the deeper I get into
the jungle of what is TEFL and English teaching
[um]
the more monsters I find @@
so it's a very interesting time I think
in TEFL at the moment
D.2.3
SM: how long have you been a teacher trainer
KK: [um]m
[um] I've been a
163
like a full-time teacher trainer I've been since 2014
before that
like since 2013
I've been a teaching practice
a teaching practice observer
weirdly they first let you observe
then they only let you do inputs which
for me is weird
because I think there are more skills in observing and giving feedback but
nevertheless
yeah so
it's [um]
four years now basically
D.2.4
SM: and you mentioned you taught before then?
how long were you teaching?
KK: [um] before that I was teaching for two years
here in Prague
SM: are you from Prague originally
KK: no I'm from Switzerland
...
I've lived here for that time basically
I came here and I taught
I started by teaching
and then I moved into training
that actually is kinda connected to ELF or
or non-nativespeakerism
nativespeakerism
in a way
D.2.5
SM: did you also do the TEFL certification?
or you did some other certification course?
KK: [um]
I did the TEFL certificate
and then I did the DELTA
D.2.6
SM: I think the longer you teach
the more you kind of develop your own style
and move away from
from the very structured
format yeah let's say
that something like TEFL Worldwide promotes
KK: yeah like
not all TEFL courses are like that
I think TEFL Worldwide is an especially strict kind of course where it's like
okay this is the formula for teaching
this is what you do
since
like I've worked there for two years
but after that I've discovered that other courses are way freer which
[um] yeah offers a lot more freedom to people who are more creative
or less dependent on frameworks but
for others I think it's more difficult because you can get lost more easily
SM: yeah I think the structure is helpful
KK: for me it was very very helpful to start with
and then it was also very helpful to kind of abandon some of it and go my own way but
basically the reason that I moved into training so fast was that I didn't
164
like I
I had
I didn't really have a choice
it was more or less either you're going to do that and
and kinda of specialize very quickly in something or
you give up
yeah?
because
especially when I started in 2011, 12
things were a bit different still
it was almost impossible for me even to like graduate with distinction
it was almost impossible to find a job as a non-native speaker
D.2.7
(continuation of previous topic)
SM: yeah
that's a topic that's come up time and time again
both from my ELF users and my teachers and administrators
[um]
and we can spend a little time on that because I think you might have some perspective here
KK: yeah well
I @@
a lot of it actually
so yeah
I think I would have benefitted more from having you know a longer time as like just a teacher
[um] and getting a bit more into [???] like
what is my own teaching style before looking at other people's teaching style
but then again
a good friend of mine always says like
Usain Bolt's coach cannot run faster than Usain Bolt
he's just really good at coaching
so that's my @@ excuse for not having as much teaching experience myself
SM: sure sure
KK: but yeah
yeah it was very eye-opening and
at that point I didn't even understand what was happening and that
I was actually like [um]
severely discriminated against
when [um]
I applied for jobs in the very beginning and [um]
like everyone else on my course was employed
like within two weeks yeah?
...
[um]
and for me it was just like
I was working in Mlada Boleslav where Skoda is
because nobody wanted that job because you had to get up at four o clock in the morning
and take a bus and a metro and a bus @@ and
that was kind of the point where I
where I started to question it
and [um] I worked there
for a while
and then realized hey okay
I need to change something
because that's not working for me
so it was either [um] [???] in the field or
or go home
and it took me a very long time to actually realize what had happened
[um]
but ever since I'm trying to sort of actively work on equality
165
or equity within the industry
and it's very very frustrating
it's very very difficult
I don't know
it feels a little bit like any other kind of struggle for equality
I think you could compare it to feminists in the seventies trying to
push their agenda
D.2.8
SM: you know
I'm able to play off the American card
but I do recognize
for a lot of friends of mine who are not native speakers
they do have a much harder time
finding
not finding a job necessarily here in Prague
because the market is wide open
but finding a job they want
or a job they like
and I think that's very unfair
KK: [um] yeah
it is unfair and it's unjustified
but it also
it makes our industry a joke
you know?
there's no professionalism in this
to just say okay
every native speaker can come and teach
but people who
you know especially local people who may have spent three or four years
doing a Bachelor's degree in teaching English
it's just so difficult to say ah well okay
but that guy took a four-week course so clearly he's superior
SM: it's remarkably unfair
KK: especially considering that not every native speaker has
[um]
an amazing awareness of their language
if I compare it to my own native language
I don't know anything about it
like I don't know why we say things
or what tenses we use and why or
I don't know how to explain a case system
I can just use it
so yeah
[um]
it's yeah
it's kinda difficult and for me it's also very
tragic
in terms of it's a kind it destroys the market you know
because a lot of people do it for a year or something
and are not really interested in long-term development of the industry
[um]
and teach for very little money
that kind of destroys it for people who want to make a living out of it yeah
D.2.9
SM: I'll play devil's advocate here
[um] with the types of arguments I've heard most often
KK: [mhm]
SM: so most people will say that uh
166
native speakers know the language better than non-native speakers
which you've already mentioned
as a teacher trainer
how would you evaluate a
typical native speaker's knowledge of English?
KK: like in terms of language awareness
like grammar?
SM: right
grammar
the rules
why we do things
why things are said a certain way
KK: on average it's poor to very poor
like [um]
like with people who call themselves grammar nazis
are the ones who know the difference between your and you're with apostrophe
that's the extent to to
to where it goes
if you compare it to
a non-native speaker
who has learned all the rules
and you can basically
on the first day you can ask them
what's the past perfect continuous passive voice
and they will just tell you
and all the Americans are just like
"WHAT!?"
that is not their problem yeah
it's not their fault
it's just the education system's fault in a way
SM: well
it's their native language
they don't need to know what that is
KK: [um] exactly
I don't know anything about my native language either
but
that's just
what the challenge is for native speakers
D.2.10
SM: another argument I hear a lot is that
non-native speakers don't have the right accent
so
they're going to be teaching the *wrong* accent
KK: well what is the right accent?
that's my question
because again the acccent of
my colleague David who's from Scotland
is that the right accent?
someone who says "scuyl" instead of "school"
is that the right accent?
is that what people want to learn?
or is the right accent a New Yorkian one?
which I personally think is [tsss]
I think there are prettier ones
that just
that doesn't make sense to me
because there is not one English accent
there is so many accents
and a lot of students just want to be understood
167
...
KK: if you ask a lot of students
they
a lot of them say that like
at least in my experience
that their accent is part of their identity
which for me it is as well
like my accent is part of my identity
I don't strive for [um]
an American accent
because why?
I'm Swiss
so I should sound like I'm Swiss
but okay
obviously you want to work towards
intelligibility yeah
as far as it goes
but you would never say oh
well I don't want an Irish teacher because they cannot teach me the "th" sounds
which is also an accent
but if you have a Czech teacher who [um]
cannot really make the "th" sounds
or does not differentiate between them well
then that's a problem
I don't know
it's a very interesting standard
D.2.11
SM: how did you learn English?
KK: well
like I'm old @@
and when I went to school back then
it's basically
the first language you learned was German
because that was basically the
key to learning to read and everything
because Swiss German is not like
no written form exists
SM: really? I
didn't know that
KK: so first you learn German
and now it's changed but back then
when you went to school you learned French
[um] for about four years
and then
then you start to learn English
SM: at what age do you start that process?
KK: well back then
when I had my first English lesson
I was 12 or 13
so
very late compared to now
or compared to other countries
where you have pre-school English
and all that [um]
yeah so very very late
but for me like
it's always the kind of
it's basically I always tell my students it's
the motivation that is key so
168
my favorite bands were The Beatles and Stones and Bob Dylan
and I wanted to know what they were singing about
so I translated it
@@
especially with Bob Dylan that gives you a lot of pronunciation work
D.2.12
KK: I'm a non-native but I'm also non-local
so language schools don't know what to do with that
SM: in terms of your background
I think that
and at least in my experience with non-native speakers
there is this sense of community that
I agree
there is a sense of identification with other people who have been in a similar situation
KK: it's more complicated than that
because I can
on one hand I can offer my American colleague a cookie
and then turn around and offer my British colleague a biscuit
...
I think [um]
it's just something that shouldn't be that important in the hiring process
I just don't think it's a useful distinction to make to say
[mm] that you have native or non-native speaking teachers
because it
it just doesn't matter
if you're a good teacher
you're a good teacher
but
it doesn't really matter what your native language is
but
and where a lot of people get me wrong
you have to have a high level of English to be able to teach it
SM: sure
I think that's reasonable @@
KK: I think that's a necessity yeah
because there is this movement of equality and of non-natives saying okay
enough is enough
to say here we draw the line
and we want to bring professionalism back into the industry
and we want to have equal wages and all that
which I absolutely support
but then you have a lot of people
like I
I did a presentation at Glasgow for IATEFL
and afterwards I got lots of emails from people saying
oh yeah
absolutely
thank you for doing this
it's very important that we're equal
but even in that short email their English was so bad that I actually felt bad about it
because I was like
you're not actually who I am talking about
@@
I actually talk about other people
so it's a very difficult thing
because you need to establish okay
you need to have a very high level
but you don't need to be native
there's no reason why you have to be native
169
D.2.13
SM: you know
there's the other argument as well that I think is an important one
that a nonnative speaker has learned the language
so we've said that they understand the grammar they understand
they're aware of the language structure
but even more than that you know
some American kid from Kansas who has only ever used English to communicate
and has only studied one year of let's say Spanish in school
is also not equipped psychologically to identify with the students in the sense that
you know
I know that this is difficult
and I know that there are going to be challenges
but you can succeed
I think it's important for students to see that
to know that it's possible
KK: I think that
because
I don't know if you read about it
there's also this phenomenon called imposter syndrome
that non-native teachers have
and I think I suffered from that severely until one of my C1 students told me
oh you're not a native speaker
that's really great to hear because
it makes me feel that it's possible for me to reach that same level
which
something like that really
really helps you as a trainer
but also like
we did a study on that actually last year
and it turned out that one of the biggest factors for new teachers
and non-native speaking teachers
was also to have a non-native speaking trainer
because they saw
okay
it's possible to get somewhere without being a native speaker
and the course I took [um]
all the trainers were native speakers
and most of my peers were native speakers
so
you know there was always the idea of
you have to be a native speaker to make this work
and for a very very long time
and then
it took a whole while for me to understand no
wait a minute
what I have to offer is actually of value
D.2.14
SM: sometimes my students come up with new words to explain concepts
and I usually feel compelled to point out
well hey look
that’s not technically a word
but I understand it
KK: one of my students this morning came up with a word
trashman instead of garbage man
which I found was such a great word
I want to be a trashman @@@ when I grow older @@
SM: but that's exactly
170
that's something that falls very much into the category of ELF
KK: yeah
SM: where
you know
I don't need any context to understand what trashman is
and I'm a native speaker but
still it's not technically the right term so
if
my argument is always that you know
if everyone in the room understands what you mean
then the fact that it's not technically considered a word
it's not technically the correct grammar
shouldn't really matter
KK: like I completely agree with you
but the weird thing to me is that sometimes
I like
kinda find boundaries in my beliefs
so I complete agree with the statement that you just made
but then sometimes that happens and they're like
well everyone understood
and I'm like yeah
but it hurts
@@
I mean come on you cannot
you cannot say that
D.2.15
SM: you mentioned you studied French
how long did you study French?
KK: a long time let me count
6, 7, 8, 9 years
and it was a very traditional grammar-translation approach
where it was really just
okay
here you've got a list of words
look it up in the dictionary
write it down
learn it
[um]
the most boring thing I've ever done in my life
but
unfortunately
quite effective
SM: why unfortunately?
KK: well because
as a
I don't know
in my position now as let's say a 21st century language teacher
looking at language as a skill and
[dun] [dun] [dun] [dun] [dun] [dun] [dun]
and communicative approach
[bla] [bla] [bla]
I would love to say the grammar-translation failed me
because it's old and it's stupid and it's boring
but it didn't
it totally works
it's absolutely justified in a way
it's not a lot of fun
but
it's very reliable and it works
171
and it made a lot of people hate the language
that's for sure
but it does work
D.2.16
SM: people have tried different methods
and there is a lot to say for the traditional way
I agree
it's not very fun
it's not very fun
KK: it's not
like with my
my czech which is
just terrible
it's interesting because I'm not making a very conscious effort
or my conscious efforts are very sporadic so
I didn't do anything
to learn the language
but everything is so heavily contextualized
because it's my life
I can understand a lot
and even if I don't
I can repeat something that they said
and usually that works as an answer
like if you're willing to accept
whatever happens with what you give them
it's quite interesting
the case can be made that
with enough context
you can sort of like sort of
second language acquisition theory
but
I mean I had to eat a lot of meals I didn't really want just because that's
that's what it got me
D.2.17
SM: have you studied any other languages?
KK: [mm]
well [um]
Swedish
which is not really ah
it's not that interesting because it's basically
if you speak German and English you just say German words
kind of in English
and then you have Swedish
it's extremely useless as well because
Swedish people all speak great English
so it's completely useless
French
Italian I speak a little bit
not great
and then yeah
my Czech efforts but
they're very limited
D.2.18
SM: do you
I guess this matters a bit more when you're teaching directly
but I think will also apply in being a teacher trainer
do you think your experience in the language classroom
172
as a student
has affected how you approach the classroom as a teacher or teacher trainer?
KK: [um]
it's tough to say because
the experience the students I observe or my students have
is far far away from me
as an adult I've never really attended group classes
and made like
a really consistent effort to learn a language
but I think what it
what it does is like
just to be multilingual
in a way what it does is to give you a lot of insight into
yeah they're probably not going to get that word
or they're definitely going to get that one
because it's the same in the five languages that I know so
chances are it's the same in their language as well
our classes here are super multilingual
like we've got a lot of Brazilians for some reason
I don't know how
SM: @@ Brazilians are everywhere
KK: obviously lot's of Russians Ukrainians
all that
but then also a lot of Chinese people
Vietnamese
so you've got so many different languages that it's
a lot of them
the Russians and Czechs especially
they learn German at some point
so it takes me half a second to identify okay
what they're saying is because they're thinking of the German word [bla] [bla] [bla] [bla] [bla]
which is
I don't know how useful that is a skill really
because
I mean
it comes up
every now and then
and I don't know how useful it is to know the reason for their mistake
it does help
I'm not a native speaker but I think students respect me
for knowing a lot of languages
so when they say something in French
I reply in French and then this is how we say that in English
and they’re like okay
she's got some insight
like we've got a lot of French speakers recently as well
just to know that I know their native language helps
it's the same with the Czech students
just that they know that I have a little bit of Czech
it kind of
I don't know
it helps in terms of credibility
D.2.19
SM: this comes up a lot in my classrooms as well
because I've also studied a series of languages
and if they speak a language I know
it was so easy for me to explain it to them
and part of what TEFL argues
at least when I did it
173
is that you shouldn’t need that
you shouldn't need to rely on another language
you should only use the target language
but the fact of the matter is that
sometimes you're really limited so
...
KK: it's basically like yeah
but if you have an A1 class
and they don't know the word for "dog"
and you could just translate it for them
that is a very easy fix
and why shouldn't that be used?
SM: maybe "dog" you can get on the ground and start barking
but what if you need to explain the word "soul"
or what if you need to explain "identity" @@
that becomes much harder
KK: @@@
exactly
why shouldn't we use everything that's there?
SM: all of our tools
D.2.20
SM: in the TEFL Worldwide courses
I'm always surprised that there's so little theoretical knowledge
at least
when I took the course in 2006
there was almost none
KK: well I think it's basically still the same course [mm]
SM: that's always a surprise to me
and I know I'm coming at it from a totally different perspective
but it seems to me
I don't know how I would handle a classroom
or design a course let along a curricul[um]
without knowing these things
KK: but I think that's just a sign of a better-educated, better-trained, more-experienced teacher
that you start to notice
like look up these things
and start to realize that you need these things
because I think a lot of people like to
you get by without
like the amount of teachers that get by on rapport with students is
it's incredible
SM: sure
a charismatic teacher can do a lot more than someone who's monotonous
and kinda boring
D.2.21
SM: what makes a good teacher?
if you had to s[um]marize it
KK: what makes a good teacher?
a very solid subject knowledge
the ability to apply that knowledge themselves
empathy
for the students
a sense of h[um]or
like
sometimes you just have to laugh about everything because @@
especially in English it's @@
sometimes it is quite ridiculous when you think about it
yeah
174
I think for me
knowledge is key but
obviously like I know a lot of people that have the knowledge but they cannot get it across
because they're too spaced out
they're too much in their own world so
you have to be
like I'm not an extrovert or anything
but you have to be able to connect to people and
and understand what they need at certain points
and I think a lot of teaching
a lot of teaching is decision-making at the right points
but that's a difficult question
...
SM: it's always the classroom and the teacher that gets blamed
so this question
what makes an effective teacher I feel
is an important question to answer
or to try to answer
KK: I think it is an important question
but I think it also really really depends on the class yeah
so
you know sometimes we've got conversations here where it's like
oh you know maybe Klara you should teach this class for a week
because they're really out of control and
I've got the reputation of being the hard-ass who's not playing games with them
and then another class actually needs someone who's just being nice
and not as strict
and doesn't insist on learning
something
all the time
so I guess it depends a lot
but it is always easy to blame the teacher
D.2.22
SM: as a teacher and teacher trainer especially
how important do you think it is to emphasize the idea that
students should be taught what they need
not necessarily what native-speaker standards
KK: well I guess it depends on the goals of the students
yeah like
if your goal as a student is to sound like a native speaker and to go to
the States or whatever
and fit in perfectly
maybe that is what's important to you
I personally think it's not like
I think for a lot of people the goal is
like they have some idea of perfect English or what English should be
and want to teach that
I think that's just not always very useful
for a lot of people that's not
like your version of perfect in English
is not my perfect version of English
I think it really really depends on what you want to do with the language
I'm not a big fan of lying to your stuednts a little bit
and being like at a later level like
oh yeah I told you that but that's not true
I try to be always honest with them
